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Afterthoughts on the St. Pat’s Festival in Five Points St. Pat’s Day has come and gone, and the great whooshing sound that you just heard is an enormous sigh of relief expelled by those of us whose lives are impacted by the venerable festival.

By York “Budd” Durden

St. Pat’s Day has come and gone, and the great whooshing sound that you just heard is an enormous sigh of relief expelled by those of us whose lives are impacted by the venerable festival. Was it a success? Yes, by all accounts the twenty-fifth incarnation of the premiere city-sponsored, public display of excess was an unqualified triumph. Money was made. Vomitus was washed from the sidewalk. Ordinary citizens made fools of themselves, and happily paid four dollars a cup for watery, flavorless potent potables in order to do so.

Is the party worth all the trouble? Without giving away my own identity, I have to say that the festival is one of the biggest days of the year for my business. But do I look forward to the event itself?

Hardly.

There’s nothing more tense than knowing that some 30,000 good-time-Charlies are going to be staggering around, many of them impulsive libertines on this magnificent day that easements allow them to openly carry around malted beverages, which ordinarily is, like, a big no-no around these parts, beau.
I’m not trying to bust anyone’s chops for having a good time, but look: I’ve had a table full of merch vomited upon by a fifteen year old girl at roughly 11:30 am (from the crimson appearance of the expulsion, she had gotten into Daddy’s sloe gin prior to arrival); as the day wears on and the liquor flows, I’ve been threatened, stolen from, and watched fisticuffs erupt out of seemingly thin air. T’ain’t all fun and games on this side of the receipt tape.

The night before is a sleepless, anticipatory one for me and my business partner; the night after is spent thrashing about in a half-wakeful reverie suffused with memories of country-comes-to-town yahoos screaming over the thumping music, expounding at length why they are the one special person who should be allowed to use our private relief facilities.

Who would look forward to such torture? Not I, said the merchant.

And what about those businesses that are shuttered for the day, because the risk of being open far outweighs the potential benefits? There’s quite a bit of money changing hands; one wonders if some of that shouldn’t be funneled to those very businesses that must give up a bright, springtime Saturday so that the Five Points Association may fill its coffers for another year. (There are extraneous fountains to be constructed, don’t you know—and in the middle of severe flood zones, no less. But this interesting situation is fodder for a future column.)

To be fair, the event is without a doubt a great calling card for the neighborhood, and the anticipation of it usually results in strong sales for us on the day before, as well as the day after (when we aren’t processing returns from hungover revelers who woke up, in the sober light of a Sunday morning, to a bad case of inebriated buyer’s remorse.) The music is usually pretty good and for the number of bands you get to see, the price is reasonable.

Ah, now there’s an issue—the price of admission to Detention Camp Five Points, as we are wont to joke each year while the fences go up.

For those of you with either short or non-existent memories, the St. Pat’s Festival used to be a free event, until certain powerful voices determined that the best way to insure big profits would be to close off this very open neighborhood, and extort folding money from people on the way into the festival. This idea, one that was not well-received at the time of its inception, has become pretty much accepted.

But is making this celebration of special-ness a gated event a good idea? I’m still not sure. St. Pat’s (the festival, not the “holiday”) was started as a way to generate funds for a variety of charities, and the question (as raised in a prior and ongoing CityPaper investigation) remains just why the city of Columbia needs to subsidize an event that charges: ten dollars for admission; four dollars a beer (and for that swill, we’re talking a significant margin); vendor fees; relies on unpaid volunteers for support staff; and receives corporate sponsorship.

Well, I don’t want to kill my own short-lived, springtime golden goose. But I just want to make sure that the St. Pat’s Festival is the best it can be, not only for the revelers, but also the people who make their living down here the other 364 days of the year.

Until next time, I remain,

York