Prior to moving to Pittsburgh and working at a Brewery, I didn’t really get too excited about St. Patrick’s Day. Where I am part Irish myself, living in Beaver County for most of my life, we really didn’t make it a big deal. Clearly in the years after moving to the city, I found a way to make up for lost time. Each year, I manage to do something memorable, even to extremely drunk people. These are some ridiculous stories from St. Patrick’s Day’s past.
St. Patrick’s Day 2008
I had been working at the brewery for a little under a year, and one of the requirements as Promotions Coordinator was to participate in the St. Patrick’s Day parade. This would be one of the last 2 years that the City actually allowed you to drink during the parade. Being it was my first year and didn’t know much about it, I decided to invite my roommate at the time, Lam to tag along. My co-worker Katie invited about 30 of her friends, so we ended up having a pretty decent crowd. I have never really been a fan of beer, however, if its 1. free and 2. some sort of beer related holiday then I will comply. After drinking in Mellon Arena parking lot from 6am until 12p.m. , the parade was over and Lam and I were dropped off at Market Square. This was our first time ever doing Market Square, and had heard from a lot of people that it was the “it” place to be, so we decided to embrace the opportunity to do what a real “Pittsburgher” would do. We proceeded to grab a beer, and about an hour later, both of us had to pee. As we walked over to the classy porta-johns, we noticed a line that was about 20 people deep at each of the 10 toilets. Having no choice and refusing to pay ridiculous covers to any bars just to use the bathroom, we just decided to wait our turn in line. When you are drunk and have to pee, 5 minutes seems like an eternity and after 10 minutes you start questioning your faith. Lam and I waited in line for at least 20 minutes. During this time we were barley talking to one another in fear that we would laugh and piss ourselves. The entire time I was pep talking myself in my head saying “Shelby, whatever you do, do not piss yourself, hold it.” Finally Lam and I were up next to use the facilities. It was at that point, I made the genius decision and said to her “Lam, if I don’t go in with you, I may piss myself, you take the toilet, I’ll take the urinal.” As we entered the porta-john we couldn’t get our pants off fast enough. With Lam sitting comfortably on the toilet, I was struggling to contort my body to make sure that I was peeing in the urinal. Being drunk and a girl, not only was I too short for this urinal, but I also discovered why a urinal is made for men. I proceeded to not get one drop of pee in the urinal but in fact peed all over myself. To make matters worse, I look at Lam and tell her that I’m peeing all over myself, yet don’t care because it feels so good. At this point, Lam is laughing hysterically, and with pee running down my leg, she asks me, “What are you doing to do now? You literally pissed yourself.” I’m a moment of drunken clarity, I decided to wrap my hoodie around my waist, and proceed to drink more because that is what my Irish ancestors would have wanted me to do. We managed to make it until 4 pm. When questioned as to why my pants were wet, I would lie to people and tell them that someone had spilled beer all over me, and would proceed to laugh telling them how ironic it was that it looked like pee. The nice thing about drunk people, is that you can fool them easily, because they are too drunk themselves to care.
St. Patrick’s Day 2009
After hearing about how much fun Lam and I had on St. Patrick’s day the previous year, my entire crew decided to attend the festivities this year. Again, along with my crew of about 10 and Kate’s Crew of 30, at 6am we started drinking heavily. 2 weeks prior to the event, I had managed to obtain a lower muscle back spasm due to Nintendo Wii Yoga, and could barely walk. In excruciating pain, I said fuck it and decided not to let it ruin the celebrations. I started drinking heavily at 6 am and took a half a muscle relaxer before we even started walking in the parade is when the first mishap occurred. We were partying in the brewery’s RV, which conveniently had a bathroom in it. Being up since 5 am, while dressing myself half asleep, I stupidly decided to wear a thong that was basically made out of a string. While in the bathroom, I managed to rip them, causing myself to free ball it for the rest of the day, with last year’s catastrophe haunting my mind. Angry and drunk, I couldn’t get my pants up and or buttoned. With the assistance of one of my friends, it was mission accomplished.
During the parade, I would ride in the back of a pick-up truck and distribute beads to my friends who were carrying buckets handing them out to the crowd. Being at a drunken scale of about a 7 already, rather than being normal, I was on the back of the truck “raising the roof” and basically being a brewery cheerleader, yelling at the crowd trying to get them pumped up about a brand that was at the time dying. One of Kate’s friends, who was in fact very Irish (Kilt included), turns to me and says, would you like some Cherries? Remembering that I had not eaten anything and Cherries are in fact a fruit, I decided to eat a few with the hopes of sobering up. After about 5 cherries, I get informed that they were soaked in 151. Trying to be a hardass, I said something smart to him along the lines of “Oh, well I will need a lot more than just a couple of cherries to get me drunk,” and proceeded to eat several more, all while we are in the actual parade. Within about 20 minutes, I could not see straight. By the time the parade was over, this dick move had set me over the drunken edge. As we approached Market Square, my half of friends were yelling at me to get off the back of the truck, while the other half went looking for Jamie, who had drunkenly gotten lost looking for the bathroom. When the truck stopped, I decided it was time to jump down, however at the exact moment that I was getting ready to get off of it, it started moving. It resulted in me falling off the back of the truck and face planting on to the pavement. I faintly heard the crowd of about 2,000 (including the people in the parking garages), let out a sound of agony as the watched in disbelief. As I jumped up, unharmed and un-phased as to what had just occurred, the same crowd gave me a warm applause as if I had just survived a potential life threatening hit from football player.
Literally not feeling any pain whatsoever, we made it to Market Square. It was at this point that we had run in to some old friends of ours from the County who enjoyed drinking just as much as us. With beers flowing, and us dancing like total drunken idiots to no music, the pain in my back was non-existent. I started getting a bit out of control, and was getting to the point of sloppy. It was at that point that one of my friends had the genius idea to stand me up next to a tree for support. Once they got me balanced, just as they turned their backs on me, I was down on the ground. Somehow, the way I fell, resulted in me ripping a 4 inch hole in my favorite pair of jeans, which happened to start in the crotch and go down the right side of my ass cheek. Now with no underwear and practically exposing myself in Market Square, once again, I wrapped my hoodie around my waist and proceeded to doing my thing. If I can remember correctly, I made it until about 6 p.m. that day.
St Patrick’s Day 2010
This was the first year that the City was enforcing “no drinking” during the parade. With Market Square Shut down and it being a cold and rainy day, I was on my own with the parade. As a group, me and my brewery guys decided we would bring beer with us because we had an “in” on the committee, and he assured us that we would be ok. We all agreed to be super discreet and pretend as if we were drinking as if we were underage. At 6 am, with all of my friends doing Kegs and Eggs without me, myself, 4 brewery workers, 2 kegs of beer and a 5th of Washington Apples, made its way to Liberty Ave to line up for the parade. Since all my girls bitched out, I decided to invite the Benstonium.com guys to join us. Since their parodies had been giving the brewery great press, I decided I could at least return the favor by supplying them with free booze. A lot of people think that working at brewery, that you live the life of Peter Griffin, which is not in fact true. There is a lot of paperwork, responsibility and decisions that need to be made. It was not my decision to tap the keg 10 minutes after we lined up. It was not my decision to fill up my beer in a coffee cup seconds before a Pittsburgh Police officer walks by. I am very respectful of the police; however this guy was just a down right prick. He started yelling and threatening us, rather than just politely telling us to put it away. I’m not even drunk at this point, and I’m getting extremely smart with him. Unfortunately, it was freezing that day, so all of my body parts were covered. Making any girly attempt to win this officer over would have been just as pointless as a porno to a blind man.
Due to the running of my mouth, he proceeded to threaten us even more by calling over another cop. The second cop was a bit nicer, and it was obvious that he was a supporter of the brewery because he was mocking the prick cop w/ out realizing it. Now the prick cop decides to make it a public affair informing 2 more officers as to the situation. I’m freaking out at this point thinking “Oh Shit, I’m going to lose my job, I’m going to get arrested etc.” After a 5th cop walked over, I felt like the situation had turned in to a police fundraiser. Finally, being politically correct, the police managed to form a huddle and quite possibly flip a coin to decide our fate. After a 15 minute panic attack, we were politely asked to leave and not rejoin the parade. I was dumbfounded for 2 reasons, 1. How the hell did this cop pass kindergarten, let alone the police exam, and 2. I had just single handily managed to get kicked out of a parade. Where it wasn’t on my bucket list, I decided to write it in as an add on. At this point, I had 2 kegs of beer, a 5th of Washington Apples and a total of 5 people to drink it. I called up the Benstonium.com guys with the change of location, and proceeded to throw our own party, in the brewery parking lot, equipped with beer pong and flip cup. I eventually met up with my friends later on, who thought it was pretty kick ass that I got kicked out of a parade.
St Patrick’s Day 2011
Last year on St. Patrick’s Day started off quite promising. After choosing to sleep in I awoke at 10 am prepared for the day’s festivities. I can’t remember if it was Maria or my idea, but we decided to save money by brining flasks along to the bar with us. With the help of our friend Mike supplying us with them, and taping in to my inner Mcguyver skills, I proceeded to cut a hole in the lining of my stylish back pack, so that the flask would hide in the lining of it, so upon bar inspection, there would be no evidence. I arrived at the first location via the Pittsburgh Public Transit authority, and made a promise to myself that I would pace myself so that I could make it the entire evening. When I arrived at Finn McCool’s, I was greeted by Maria and others and started drinking beer. After choking down my 3rd Miller Lite, I decided it was vodka time. Maria and I ordered water, and proceeded to the bathroom where we filled up our waters with vodka. Being slightly buzzed and fascinated with the toilet paper dispenser, Maria and I thought it would be a mature decision to steal a roll for later in case we may need it. After barhopping to several locations, and losing members in our group, we ended up at Villa around 6p.m. At this point the only people left standing were me, Maria and Mike.
Being sloppy drunk I decided to text the Benstonium.com guys (since last year ended up being fun) to see if anyone was out. A few of them showed up at Villa and we proceeded to drink our faces off. Maria and I made a trip to the bathroom, and decided to share a stall because the line was a little long. It was at this point that I pulled out the flask and the door opens. It is the bathroom attendant who proceeds to start yelling at us because of our flask. Maria, being a little spitfire decides to start arguing with the bathroom attendant, meanwhile like a good friend, I hurry up and fill up our drinks with vodka. Maria and the bathroom attendant start going at it for about 3 minutes, when she proceeds to bar us from going to the bathroom together, like two kindergarteners. This does not sit well with Maria who is now drunk and fired up. I convince her to leave the bathroom, and give her a newly filled drink. Shortly after the bathroom incident, my cell phone had died due to the shitty battery life of the first ever Droid, and I had gotten separated from Mike and Maria.
At this point, I had no concept of time, or manners. It was just me and my friend Chris from the Benstonium.com crew. 95% of the time, I am a mischievous drunk. Sometimes I lie to people, flirt with guys I have no interest in, and at one point I was a kleptomaniac that would steal glassware from bars, leading to Maria never having to worry about buying another glass. I don’t know if it was Maria’s hostility or the environment, but I suddenly flipped a switch. Being way too drunk to care, I had been already been reprimanded 2 times at Villa for not following their non-smoking policy, ironically by a bouncer that my friend Giselle was dating at the time. Upon my third strike, he comes walking over and kicks me out. Rather than complying, I refuse to go down without a fight, and start yelling at him telling him how terrible of a person he is and how terrible he treats Giselle. I then tell him he is dead to me and at this point Chris is helping me walk out of the bar. I’m not sure who’s idea it was, or Chris not seeing the Shelby drunken beast before, but we decided to go to Burger King to get some food to help sober up.
The events that occurred next were retold to me the next day, because I do not remember. Apparently upon our arrival to BK, I was still fired up about getting kicked out of Villa. When we got to the counter, I ordered my burger and fry in a drunken manner, and proceeded to the condiment station where I wanted ketchup for my fries. At this point, the dispenser was empty, and rather than acting like a normal human being, I decided to go “Jeff Reed” on this ketchup dispenser. (For those of you that do not know what this means, Jeff Reed was drunk at a Sheetz one night and “beat up” a paper towel dispenser in the bathroom.) In the midst of me beating this ketchup dispenser up, I manage to get ketchup all over myself as well as in my hair. The guy at the counter, rather than calling the police on me, streamlined my order to get me the hell out of there. I am not sure if I was given additional food, or stole it on purpose, but the next day Chris informed me that we ended up receiving a ton of food that we didn’t order. Hearing this story while picking ketchup out of my hair on Maria’s couch that next morning, only worries me as to what will occur this year…Stay tuned!
- Keepin’ it Real!
Shelby
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