The Wearing o' the Public Drunkenness

I agreed to work the coat check at Calico Jack's on St. Patrick's Day this year. Usually I go in at 5:15, but the manager wanted me there at noon this time. I thought it was a little on the early side, but I set out at about 11:15 anyway, figuring he knew more than I did about how this whole thing usually goes down in the city. I rode the subway with people who had clearly been celebrating already. Everyone, it seemed, was wearing green, from people in overt, kelly green t-shirts with shamrocks on them to businessmen in sage-colored dress shirts under suits. People in the Columbia area weren't really out in full St. Paddy's Day force when I got on the train, but when I emerged from Grand Central Station I saw huge groups of people, mostly college-aged kids, wandering the streets wearing green Mardi Gras beads and talking and laughing a little too loudly.

The bar was crowded but not packed when I arrived, but within an hour it was pretty full. Dave told me that last year they did $27,000 in sales on St. Patrick's Day. I'm not sure how much they made this time, but I have to guess it wasn't too far from that number. The place got most crowded around 4:00 and stayed pretty packed until about 9:00, and then the crowd started to thin out. I guess when one starts drinking before noon, one doesn't stay out as late.

The bouncers at Calico Jack's are pretty good about getting rid of people who look like they're too drunk to be there, whether they're getting rowdy or just look like they might start throwing up any second. I saw some people who weren't doing so hot, but nothing terribly noteworthy. Employees who came in from the outside, however, said that it was chaos - people sleeping against planter boxes, throwing up in the gutters, etc. Yikes. I saw some questionable dancing from where I was sitting, and at one point a confused girl stood next to me for about five minutes, swaying now and then and looking blearily around until her friends swooped down on her - they thought she'd wandered off - but that was just about it. The general level of drunkenness was pretty remarkable, though. Dave, who has worked at this bar for over a year, said that he'd never seen so many people in such bad shape before, and despite the fraternity parties I sometimes attended at Vanderbilt, have to agree. It was certainly interesting to watch, however.

At about 10:00, a group from the NYC police department filed in wearing kilts, climbed onto the bar, and played bagpipes for about five minutes. I'm not sure what the connection to St. Patrick's Day was exactly, bagpipes being from, y'know, Scotland, but they put on a good show and the crowd seemed to be pretty into it.

I met several actual Irishmen as well. Several of them kept popping by the closet to say hello, although I got a bit tired of them after a while, despite their accents. I guess they had a better excuse to overindulge than anyone else there did, though.

Usually the bar closes at 4:00 A.M., but we shut down, to my profound relief, around 2:00. I didn't make much money - the weather was gorgeous and warm and not conducive to coat-wearing - and so one of the managers just let me keep everything in the cash box, which I was grateful for. At closing, I had three coats left in the closet, which is unusual. A girl came staggering in after we'd supposedly locked the doors and thrust her ticket at me to claim one of them. I recognized her as one of a trio who had checked coats, and I asked her where her two friends were. One of them had left a purse with her iPhone and other important-looking things (I didn't want to dig around too much; I just peeked inside.) She mumbled, "I d'no," and staggered back out again. Hmmm.

As I headed home, the streets and, later, the subway station were dotted with work crews cleaning up. I'm used to seeing a garbage truck here and there that early in the morning, but this time I saw huge trucks with high-powered hoses attached to water tanks and people equipped with brooms and mops. The sidewalks and platforms were being absolutely scoured. I can't imagine how things must have looked before the clean-up started, but this afternoon when I took the subway into midtown again, everything was clean. As clean as it ever gets in New York anyway.

It wasn't the most exciting night I've ever had, but I was glad to make some money and do some first class people-watching. I had fun hanging out with Dave and the other employees, most of whom I really like. And I got a great lesson in the fine art of self control.