Wallet Card Goes to St. Patrick's Day

While today is St. Patrick's Day as observed by the majority of Irish and wanna-be Irish revelers the world over, it doesn't feel like it where I am. We celebrated over the weekend, and we did so the same way we celebrate everything else: parades and alcohol. Cue the Wallet Card.

On Saturday we made it to the Irish Channel parade uptown. It was still early in the St. Patrick's Day season, so everyone's costumes and tolerance for partying were still intact. I doubt all those giant coins made it through to tonight.

This man's tongue was...I mean, look at it. Is that an Irish thing?

As you may remember from my previous #WalletCard posts, parades are made up of marching groups and floats, and St. Paddy's parades here have far more of the former. These guys carry huge foam cylinders packed with flowers which they trade for kisses. All in good fun, of course. I went home with six flowers myself.

Not Irish, per se, but worth a look.

The mayor of Kenner, La., Mr. Mike Yenni. Is this the first #WalletMayor?

The perfect beer for St. P.....wait....

There. That's the stuff.

We passed the old bead tree on our way to the restroom. Over a month later and it's still all beaded up!

See that guy in the front of the float with the white hat? He called me over for a look at the card after this picture was taken, and upon realization what card it was he dropped several dozen green beads on me. At that moment everyone in the crowd wished they had brought their Griffey rookies from home.

The floats are re-purposed from Mardi Gras, some more cleverly than others.

This is one of my good friends, Tony, who marches with the Lyons Club. I see him in a lot of parades.

We finished up the day with a few pounds of boiled crawfish on the lakefront. This is the sunset over "the Point" at Lake Pontchartrain.

Some unique parking outside the restaurant.

We were up early the next morning for the Metairie St. Patrick's Day Parade (rarely on St. Patrick's Day), my favorite parade all year long.

Everybody wears green, but some people only have one green shirt. This is Jason's only green shirt.

#WalletCop is back!

Everyone outside of the New Orleans metropolitan area thinks we have a Southern accent. We do not. Oh, we have an accent, don't get me wrong, but it's not that drawl you may be imagining. It's difficult to describe. We call it the "yat" accent. Hence this band, the Yat Pack.

I should have mentioned that in lieu of beads and trinkets (of which there are still plenty to be had), the majority of throws in these parades are carrots, onions, potatoes, and some very coveted heads of cabbage. That young lady above is about to launch a potato into the crowd.

By the time we made it home we had six heads of cabbage, a half dozen carrots, a few onions, potatoes, and oranges. Oh, and three bars of Irish Spring.

I'm not kidding, They throw bars of Irish Spring. None of this has ever seemed strange to me until I had to type it.

That girl in the middle wore a skirt so short that I could not in good conscience show it on this blog.

As you can see I did forego the plastic sleeve this weekend. May only be a BGS 9 now.

Happy St.Patrick's Day, everybody!