Hoboken St. Patrick’s Day Parade
Some floats beckon to the bar
It was Dublin’s Oscar Wilde who said: Oh, he occasionally takes an alcoholiday.
It was Hoboken’s Frank Sinatra who said: Alcohol may be man’s worst enemy, but the Bible says, love your enemy.
Ireland, New Jersey and alcohol have taken to the streets of Hoboken on the first Saturday in March since 1986 to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day. With over 100 bars contained in its 1.28 square miles, only New Orleans has more bars per corner than Hoboken.
Organized by a parade committee made up of residents, this year’s parade started at 1 p.m. and lasted a little over an hour. The drinking began hours earlier and continued into the early hours. A procession of people started to spill out of the train station and the PATH station as early as 7 a.m. Many headed straight to the sidewalks to line up for the parade, but more were heading for the bars that opened between 10 and 11 in the morning.
There were an unprecedented number of police on the streets. They were put in force to stem the drinking, which in the past has caused Hoboken residents to call for an ending to the 22-year-old tradition. Anyone caught with an open container was fined $1000. Anyone caught drunk was arrested.
But despite a record turnout of 32,000 people and despite the number of beer-filled MacDonald’s cups (straws and all), only 402 fines were issued and only two people were arrested.