Chicago’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade and the dyeing of the Chicago River will bring a crowd downtown Saturday after a two-year break due to the pandemic.
And as people visit downtown for the daytime festivities, Irish pub employees are also preparing for what they say is their busiest day of the year after 24 months of uncertainty and restrictions.
The Chicago River will be dyed green for the 60th year at 10 a.m. Saturday, between Orleans Street and Columbus Drive, a wider area than in pre-pandemic years.
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The parade will start at 12:15 p.m. at East Balbo and South Columbus drives and move north on Columbus to East Monroe Street.
The parade will honor essential workers. It will feature more than 100 units, said Dave Adams, operations manager and parade coordinator at the city’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events.
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Adams said he expects people will be eager to see the St. Patrick’s Day Parade after not having one for two years, calling it the “unofficial start of spring and event season” in Chicago.
“I think, you know, the public is itching to attend a parade,” Adams said. “I think it’s a Chicago tradition. Especially the river dyeing.”
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Temperatures in the mid- to low-20s might be a factor in how many people attend the river dyeing or the parade, Adams said. But in pre-pandemic years, on a nicer weather day, about 50,000 people would attend the parade.
Adams said some of the difficulty of this year’s planning was making sure they were going to have the event because they had to plan for city departments to have all the resources needed to ensure the parade is safe. That means departments had to plan for employees to work overtime on a Saturday, Adams said.
The Office of Emergency Management, in a news release, said people should always be aware of their surroundings in large crowds and report suspicious activity.
“Chicago will have citywide deployments for the St. Patrick’s Day Weekend to ensure the safety and security of the public,” according to the OEMC statement.
“OEMC will monitor weekend events and weather conditions citywide from the operations center and coordinate public safety resources with the Chicago Police Department, Chicago Fire Department and city of Chicago infrastructure departments,” the statement said.
As part of planning leading up to the parade, Adams said his team also looked at COVID-19 case numbers and saw they were “pointing in the right direction.” People will not be required to wear a mask or show proof of vaccine to attend the parade.
On Thursday, the seven-day average case positivity rate, meaning the average number, over the previous seven days, of COVID-19 positive cases, was at 1.2%.
Parade organizers were recommending people use public transit to get to the downtown festivities. Chicago Transit Authority will be offering $5 day passes and $15 three-day passes this weekend.
Metra will also offer day passes at $7 or a weekend pass for $10. Adult Metra riders can also bring up to three children 11 and under on the train with them for free.
As city officials prepare for large groups of people watching the river turn green and then the parade, nearby Irish pub managers have been preparing for the aftermath — at-capacity restaurants with patrons eating corned beef and cabbage and drinking all day.
Mat Haywood, bar manager at O’Callaghans, is expecting a line out the door. He recalled being busy despite the parade being canceled in 2020, with people who had come for the parade deciding to still go out that night not knowing that everything would shut down a few days later.
He also recalled how his staff handled St. Patrick’s Day celebrations in 2021, with limited capacity, mask requirements and social distancing.
“We were like rock stars with all of the rules that we had to follow,” Haywood said.
They spray-painted shamrocks out the door to ensure people would social distance while waiting in line to go into the bar, Haywood said.
The pub also staffed security counting the amount of people inside and ensuring people were staying seated at their tables and were wearing masks.
“So it was hard, you know, bartending and managing through the whole pandemic is was tricky,” Haywood said. “It was hard, was stressful. But we did it you know, we’re lucky that we’re still here.”
Kieran Ahern, general manager of Fado, said his staff has been ordering extra product for a couple weeks, slicing corned beef for a week and he had 60 kegs of Guinness delivered a few days ago.
“We’re delighted it’s back,” Ahern said of the parade, adding that it’s the busiest day of the year for Fado, along with St. Patrick’s Day.
Ahern moved to the U.S. from Limerick, Ireland, when he was 26, in 1997. After living in Florida two years, he moved to Chicago in 1999 and within days he got a job at Fado, where he’s worked ever since, he said.
After the pandemic shut down restaurants in 2020 then reduced capacity and added other safety requirements for businesses, it took Ahern about six months to hire back enough staff to keep the restaurant going once he could increase his customer capacity, he said.
Expecting a much larger crowd than usual on Saturday, Ahern asked former employees to work a shift for the day and he’s relying on his family to help him run the pub Saturday.
“It’s truly a family affair for me,” Ahern said. “My dad and my brother are playing in the band that’s playing some of the music. My wife is working the door. My son is behind the bar and my daughter is on the floor. My older daughter is food running. My daughter’s boyfriend is food running. So it is we’re truly kind of trying to pull everybody in that we can to just help out.”
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The band his dad and brother are part of, Nappertandy, will be playing at the pub in the afternoon, and the Chicago Irish Band will play Saturday night. The two bands will also be playing on St. Patrick’s Day, Ahern said.
Although Ahern is expecting a lot of people, he said he thinks it’ll take a while for crowds to get back to what they were before the pandemic.
“I don’t believe there’s as many people coming into town for it as there would be in previous years just given you know, a lot of the uncertainty that existed,” Ahern said. “So I think it will take a year or two for it. To come back to kind of pre-pandemic levels.”
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