St. Patrick’s Day 2007: Take your pick

by Teresa Gubbins

As holidays go, St. Patrick’s Day is pretty tenuous. A celebration of, um, the "patron saint of Ireland," it's so second-tier, workers don’t get to take it off (this year it falls conveniently on a Saturday, the "convenience" being that you can really whoop it up on the weekend).

Do we celebrate St. Casimir, the patron saint of Poland? Or Our Lady of Aperecida, the patron saint of Brazil? No and no. Yet, when St. Patrick's Day comes along, we're willing to do things we wouldn't be caught dead doing at any other time of the year. Such as:

• Wear the color Kelly green
• Drink too much beer
• Sing The Unicorn Song by the Irish Rovers (sing it now! "There was green alligators and long-necked geese")
• Pour a bunch of green food coloring into our beer -- and then drink it
• Wear kilts
• Eat a meal in which every ingredient is boiled (corned beef and cabbage)
• Pay attention to a small plant called a shamrock
• Talk like the guy in the Lucky Charms commercial
• Pretend to enjoy the sound of bagpipes
• Drink a ton of beer

It's hard to understand why we don't wear these things 365 days a year.

As far as observing St. Pat's in Dallas, the hands-down major event is the parade on Greenville Avenue, followed by the block party on Lower Greenville, with Terilli's at the eye of the storm.

But you don’t have to go to Greenville to go green -- not with our mega-list of events going on throughout the area.

This year, the big trend is to come up with your own catchy spin-off name. In Addison, it's the Blarney Blast 2007 at Bennigan's Grill & Tavern. In Lewisville, it's the "St. Fatty's Day" Festival, a three-night extravapalooza at Fat Daddy's Sound Shack, with local and touring acts including U.K. punk band The Exploited on Thursday; The News Can Wait, a Fat Daddy's fave, on Friday; and 10 bands Saturday, with headliner Hope Dies Last.

In Fort Worth, it's the Paddy O'Party at Central Market, while McCarty's Tavern in Richardson leaves out the "O" with its similarly-titled St. Paddy Party.

The saint of green beer.

Two new neighborhood events seem sure to give Greenville a run for its money: the DTown Dallas St. Patrick's Eve party, a crawl through the Central Business District starting at 6:30 p.m. with a block party and wine tasting at Urbanmarket and a fashion show at Fuse, before moving to Ten Sports Grill and City Tavern, and finally an afterparty at Club Purgatory.

Over in Uptown, the Idle Rich Pub, owned by authentic Irish person Feargal McKinney, is throwing a two-day St. Patrick's Day tent party, with U2 tribute band Blood Red Sky performing on Friday at 8 p.m., and an all-day all-night hoo-ha on Saturday.

Traditionalists will want to celebrate at an Irish bar like Tipperary Inn, while their polar opposites will head to the 'burbs for offbeat events: Sipping Saturday at La Buena Vida Vineyards tasting room in Grapevine; Paddy Gone Wild at San Martino Winery & Vineyards in Rockwall; and a St. Patrick’s party at Eisenberg's Skate Park in Plano.

Vaden." class="gallery">

Jon Purvis

He calls himself "Vaden" now. Vaden.

Every bar is hosting some kind of musical event, but the two picks have to be the Gothic St. Pat's Day show at Lakewood Bar & Grill, with Ego Likeness, Ayria, and Cruxshadows; and the Toadies reunion show at Energy Square at Greenville and University.

As for the aftermath on Sunday, you can go in two directions: an original Irish dance performance by the Hibernia Irish Dance Company based on the writings of William Butler Yeats, oh my; or the St. Patrick's recovery party being thrown by the oh-so-clever Adair's Saloon. Is there really a choice?