Green with envy

In all the years I have lived in Chicago, I have never seen them dye the river Green for St. Patrick’s day. Sure, I’ve seen it green in movies, but never in person. I was determined this year to cross that off my “to see” list. The paper said the river dying would take place at 10:45am. I got downtown and stationed myself in the front row center of a drawbridge over the Chicago river at 10:40am. Then I waited…and waited…and waited. Although it was scheduled to be 50 degrees that day, the cold wind blowing off the lake was smacking me in the face and chilled me till I was teary eyed and numb.

After 30 minutes, I started to wonder if they had already dyed the river. I mean it WAS green hued. Then again it always seemed to be a bit green. I was supposed to meet my friends in Wicker Park at noon, so after about an hour of waiting I decided to start heading to the subway. I got about a block away when the crowd started to cheer. I ran back through the now 10-deep crowd while cursing myself for enduring all that cold and pain only to give up my sweet watching spot five minutes before the action. Aaarrrrghhh! I stuck up my camera and shot at random above the crowd, but I totally missed the guy in the boat doing the dying. People soon started to filter away since the highlight was over, so I snuck in and took some shots of the newly dyed river. Yeah, it is totally green, like eco-plasmic green! I guess the dye eventually spreads out to encompass the whole river in a couple of hours.

I didn’t stick around to see the dye diffuse with the rest of the river…I had some serious drinking ahead of me. I met up with the boys at Aberdeen in Wicker Park for a noon mimosa (well they had real drinks and I had the girly yummy drink). We moved on to a house party in Lincoln Park where we were the oldest people there! Seriously, I felt like a narc. We eventually discovered the whiskey cupcakes and Jell-O shots (yes Jell-O shots…hey we were in a frat party, what do you expect). That made the party much more interesting…that and the girl that was “(whisper) so hot” according to the guys. We moved on to a few bars in Lakeview and Ashland where we had car bombs and x-rated photo hunts (it seemed like a good idea at the time). We eventually ended up in Wrigleyville after almost 12 hours of drinking (where I think I did the running man to a Lady GaGa song…she SAID just dance, so I obeyed).

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!