Your Man on the Ground Part 1: New Haven

In this series, I hit the streets for some on-the-ground réportage... chengui!

Last weekend, I was in NEW HAVEN for the Saint Patrick's Day Parade! It was exteremely weird and a ton of fun, i will give you a "best of" and some pictures. There was ZERO Yale presence there because it was Spring Break but really it was so surreal and cool that Yale students should stick around for the weekend more- I certainly would have if I'd known about it.













Your intrepid réporter, with some drunken Quinnipiac and Southern Connecticut students. Everyone was drinking openly in front of the cops all over Chapel Street and College Street. In fact these Toads-goers had a keg on College Street, and they made a homeless guy do a keg stand.












Bagpipers. These guys were followed by a St. Patrick themed float called "Snakes on a Float."
















Previous Grand Marshals of the parade. The current Grand Marshal marched with Mayor DeStefano, who had a shit-eating grin on his face and was also decked out in the Irish 1900s regalia.














Little girls doing Irish line dancing. In the background is a drunk guy from Q-Pac who frightened the girls and their mothers.
















Keith Urbahn's buddy Ziggy, the insane guy who waves the American flag from his American flag-painted truck when the war protesters are out.

Basically, after the Irish-related groups went by, the parade turned into a free-for-all of groups with no relation to St. Patrick's Day who just wanted to march:
-A group of Star Wars fans dressed as Darth Vader and his storm troopers
-A group of Old Timey Bike enthusiasts (the bikes with the big front wheel)
-The Connecticut Crash football team from the National Women's Football League
-Like 73 "Drum and Fife Corps" dressed up in Revolutionary War garb, playing battle hymns and firing blanks into the air from their bayonets (representing towns from Madison all the way to Milford)

But my personal favorite random group was the "Columbus Day Parade Committee." At the front of their group were some younger Italian-Americans wearing jerseys from the Italian national soccer team. Fair enough. But the best part was that behind the youngsters was a van in which a handful of older Italian men sat. These guys were definitely Mafiosos, and they were mean-looking. I waved at them out of fear of retribution. Though they were too far away for me to hear them speaking, I imagine the inside of their van sounded something like this:

Mafioso #1: Those lousy fuckin' Micks thought they were gonna parade widdout us?

Mafioso #2: Nobody parades in dis fuckin' town widdout us. Nobody! We own da parade racket!