Last Saturday's annual St. Patrick's Day Parade in San Francisco seemed larger than usual this year, with 130+ contingents marching up Market Street to Civic Center Plaza...
...that included boys playing soccer, or maybe it was Gaelic football...
...little girls dressed up as ballerina faeries...
...and very serious looking adolescent Irish step dancers.
There was a large political contingent, demanding reunification of Ireland which has been partitioned since 1921...
...and a Chinese dancing contingent from the Fei Tian Academy of the Arts, a Falun Gong school at the base of Potrero Hill. They seem to show up at just about every public event in San Francisco lately except for the Chinese New Years Parade where they are not allowed.
All the city unions were represented, from the police and fire departments to the building trades, including the Plumbers and Steamfitters above. "They're late," the Parade Marshal in front of me was saying to a friend while looking at his schedule. "Must have been enjoying themselves early."
There were high school marching bands from far and wide, including the group from Nevada above who were the whitest contingent I have seen in some time.
A quartet of drunken teenage boys (NOT pictured above) were heckling the band members below as they marched by. "You look like a bunch of faggots," they yelled. "What's that you're playing? The skin flute?"
The band members did their best to ignore them as did other spectators. Personally, I was hoping for a Maureen O'Hara matriarch to slap their cheeks and tell the teenagers to behave or they'd be in real trouble.
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