This was my first time braving Greenville for St. Patrick's. I was expecting it to be bad. What I was not expecting was the last days of Sodom and Gomorrah. As I, the only sober person on the entirety of Greenville, struggled through a crowd roughly comparable to the population of Ireland itself (and way more drunk), I reflected that getting here earlier to drink might have been a better idea. At least that way I'd be stumbling into as many people as were stumbling into me. I didn't even know about open container laws. I could have brought one beer, just to numb the pain. But no, now I was a thirty-minute wait from sustenance at anywhere that might possibly have been selling beer. Color me unprepared. --Gavin Cleaver
See also: -Snoop Dogg's St. Patrick's Day Concert: Review and Photos -The Fans of the St. Patrick's Day Snoop Dogg Concert
The Lower Greenville area was not the place to be Saturday if you have aversions to large, dense crowds, city walls made of portable toilets, pervasive fake, plastic mustaches and rampant price gouging. I'm not sure if it's possible to obtain a contact drunk, but it really did seem as though the few beers I drank before arriving on the scene (where there was a fucking $10 cover charge to get into an area where you would then wait in line for a minimum cost of $6 for watered down beer) seemed to have amplified their potency as soon as I stepped into this Soddam and Greenmorah. Yeah, yeah: "That's any major city on St. Patrick's Day. Get over yourself." Fair enough. --Brian Rash
Leprechauns, fairies and a walking four leaf clovers were just some of the Irish oddities celebrating St. Patrick Day Festival on Lower Greenville. Despite the Dallas PD calling for the crowd to disburse once the parade finished, thousands of people littered the streets. Literally. It was as if the slums of Dallas had raised its weary head from its forgotten past and vomited trash, which covered the street like a second layer of skin.
Dodging trash and drunken people took an abundance of soberness that I somehow lost between Dyer Street and Fondren Drive. Traversing through a crowd of Irish zombies to reach the Snoop party also proved to be easier said than done. Every few feet another one of the drunken bastards collapsed, causing the line to falter.
When the last one fell, I looked at her before entering a block of converted Irish pubs for another quick shot. Drool trailed down her half-green face, and her four-leaf clover eyes slowly crossed from heat exposure. Thankfully, an Irish penguin picked her up and carried her away, but more falling drunks soon took her place.
Following the police barricade to beer havens and, eventually, to the Observer's party felt like I was trapped in a twisted version of George Orwell's 1984. Driving down Greenville in his white SUV, Big Brother herded the green-clad crowd with his bullhorn - "Go home, people! Go home. Go home. Go home." - while Snoop's magic drove us onward to a mystical place where music, pipes and alcohol awaited our arrival. --Christian McPhate
Dallas on St. Patrick's Day is like Denton on a Tuesday: everyone is blitzed out of their minds and you're likely to see something amazing happen. When DART pulled up to my station, a young lady stumbled off and immediately took my bench seat and lowered her head to nod off.
On the last a stop, a gentleman lacking his front upper row of teeth joined us and started loudly telling a story about how a "God damn illegal Mexican" got into a wreck with him and ruined his life. Supposedly the guy survived the accident but the "Illegal who wasn't supposed to be here" was killed and our toothless raconteur was ordered to pay the family a settlement. He's going on and on about illegals and Mexicans despite the fact that I, and many others around him, just happen to be Mexican.
Shortly before our stop he asks if anyone wants to buy some Hydrocodone and when a girl asks him what he's got, HE PULLS OUT A BOTTLE AND SHOWS HER. --Jaime-Paul Falcon
After taking in the sights and sounds and various points of entertainment, intentional or otherwise, such as the megaphoned street preacher imploring everyone entering the area to repent lest they be damned forever, we headed over to the Snoop Dogg show via taxi, and our driver was an erudite Iranian, well versed on the subject of world politics. Though I don't know how the topic got to world politics, his was an impressive mind all the same. (BR)
I popped in Desperados Mexican restaurant to use their bathroom and it was absolute chaos. Drunk green people were pouring in and out of every crevice of the place. The bar seemed less crowded, so I was tempted to grab a quick shot before heading out. A group of girls at the bar were utterly hammered.
When the bartender finally takes my order and turns around to hand me my shot, one of the girls grabs my shot before I can take it from the bar, and drinks it, forcing the bartender to clumsily make me another one. When he turned around to make another, one of the girls hurled the empty shot glass at his back. Oh, St. Patrick's Day. --Rachel Watts
After a while, I have some time to kill, and I desperately need to charge my phone, so I wander down Greenville, and pop into a random bar to look for a plug outlet. As I walk in, a girl laying cheek-to-concrete is passed out and being helped up by her friends. I head to through the inside, stop at the bar for a quick drink, hand the bartender $20, and in his drunken stupor, he doesn't hand me any change. After standing there, being ignored on account of the loud, demanding douchebags around me, I finally get the bartender's attention and it's like he never saw me in his life. He can't remember how much change to give me, so he makes up a random amount, shoves some cash at me and I promptly head out to the backdoor patio, where I spot a plug. After charging my phone, sucking down my drink and getting ready to go, a drunk guy stumbles up and without even speaking, attempts to hand me a menthol cigarette. I kindly decline, and he launches into a conversation with me about all of the various tattoos on his body, their meanings and how, why and when he got them, including the one on his inner lower lip, that says "dirty." Not wanting to be interrupt, and still needing to finish my drink, I listen. I learn about Puerto Rican demon masks and how they're used in traditional dances and celebrations, initially created to scare little children back into church centuries ago, according to my new best friend. This goes on for way too long and I am eventually forced to cut him off and sprint back to the concert grounds, just in time to see Snoop Dogg. (RW)
We waited across the street from the Energy Square parking lot for the rest of our group to arrive, and it seemed at that point to be a fantastic idea to wait in line for 25 minutes at the 7-11 for another beer. While waiting in the line that wrapped all the way around the inside of the store, I noticed that someone had partially opened a tin of cat food and just left it there on the rack. Now, say what you will about the drunken debauchery that happens on St. Patrick's Day, but when people are going around, pretty as you please, and opening cat food tins only to leave them behind on the shelf, their contents slowly growing more and more stale, well that seems like the line. And it was crossed. I don't want to raise my future children in a place where things of this magnitude occur unpunished. (BR)
A marvelous ode to overt St. Patrick's Day overindulgence: a woman decked out in faux pearls, a green top and white shorts that look to have a yellowish stain on them. She was furiously drinking what I hope is water from a Styrofoam cup while her male companion did everything he could to keep her upright.
I heard some vehicles crash into each other, and while turning to get a glimpse of the carnage I happened to catch our swaying hero vomit all over her pearls. Stay Classy, Dallas. (JPF)
At Jack-in-the-Box, a homeless leprechaun danced and sang to a tune that only he could hear. His words didn't make much sense, but the effect on the Irish zombies was mesmerizing, for they swayed to his groove as if he were the Pied Piper.
Several "What ups?" greeted me as I entered the cattle chutes that led to the ultimate Irish party. As the line moved forward, people slapped hands, Irish zombies drooled on each other's shoes and several leprechauns enhanced the energy of the crowd with Lucky Charms that were fucking magically delicious. (CM)
