The South Side Parade was the template for every major parade in Chicago. In the 1950's this parade traveled west along 79th Street between Halsted and Ashland Avenues. So successful was this event that it caused the Chicago Chamber of Commerce to lobby Mayor Richard J. Daley to move the south side parade downtown.
In the 1970's a few families in St. Cajetan Parish of Morgan Park revived the event. The parade attracted hundreds of thousands of people, Bill Clinton, Pat Buchanan, Jerry Brown, Al Gore, and Barack Obama in bids for the Presidency.
By the new Century, the South Side Irish Parade had become Mardi Gras on steroids - A one day Booze-Apa- Losers. In the word's of the late Chicago Detective and Philosopher Billy Higgins, "America's Youth is Fully Kreuzaned." Fights, public micturation and all too often defecation, and battalions of bleary-eyed bounders unable to find the magic bus back to the fern-bar grabbing a curb on Western Ave. long after the Mounted Cops cleared the way became the signature images of the parade.
I believe that the Parade should be returned - clean and sober. The Media can and will print and present the absolute worst about this parade, though it will continue to launder the excesses of many other community events in neighborhoods not thick with ethnic Catholics.
Put some muscle on the beer distributors who push "Get Your CHI-RISH On!" Miller is to beer in the same way that Planned Parenthood is to womens health.
Require any and all buses from fern bars park at 83rd Street Dan Ryan Woods Parking and provide a booze free shuttle, or the lustier youth can manhandled their coolers and case up the hill and parade their way to the parade kick-off point, while dodging Chicago and Evergreen Park Law Enforcement Professionals.
These might be some good starts. Stupid does not need a parade. The Parade is for the kids.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Side_Irish
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