Beyond the Pale

This town has more Irish bars than Boston and Chicago combined. There is one on every corner. It’s the kinda town that has Guinness and Smithwick’s on tap all year around. It’s one of those places that you can get a shamrock on your Guinness even if it isn’t St. Patrick’s Day.

Around here it’s very fashionable to be Irish. Ya know how on St. Patrick’s Day everyone is Irish? Going round with “kiss me I’m Irish” buttons and those goofy green hats- well in this town, any day of the year you can ask someone’s name and have them reply- “me name is Paddy O’Martinez”, or “herself is Mary O’ Kczywinski”, or “I’tis Brendan O’Dusendorf”.

So a few nights ago I was out with a few friends. Our target was an Irish Bar that was hosting a fiddler’s weekend, and had a band from Canada playing. Now, you may not know this but Canada has some pretty fine traditional Irish bands. Canada also has some pretty fine non-traditional Irish Bands, techno-Irish bands, punk-Irish bands, modern rock-Irish bands, blue grass-Irish bands, classic rock-Irish bands and a few Rap-meets-Disco-Irish bands to boot.

So we get to the bar early thinking to stake out a good spot. But -by the saints- the place is already packed. It’s shoulder to shoulder, elbow to elbow, knee to knee and toe to toe. After cooing to a couple of “old dudes” who make room for us to get close enough to yell an order and stick a fist full of cash through the mass of humanity adhered to the bar, we are rewarded with three tall glasses of Guinness.

In the time it takes to drink them we are pushed and shoved and stepped on and elbowed and accosted by any number of roving Irish wanna-bes. Our ears are on the verge of bleeding the din is so loud, and the band hasn’t even started yet. The fire marshal(who’s probably Irish too) must be out of town because there are 654 more people in the place than there were when we ordered our Guinness, and that makes a total of 3278 people in a bar that the fire marshal’s sign says can hold 200.

Now, one of my friends starts getting a bit edgy. She’s not Irish. She’s not used to the amount of closeness among the Irish evident in the situation. She tries getting her back against the bar, but that is impossible. Next she tries to find a wall to back up to, but the wall space is taken. She hides in the rest room for a while, but even that is crowded. She ends up jumping up on the stage which is empty because the band still hasn’t arrived and it’s an hour past the time they were going to start. Pretty soon the whole lot of us are up on the stage and the crowd, apparently never having seen the real band before, thinks we are a Girl-Power-Retro-Glam-Irish Band.

The crowd is like a school of fish. The tip of the crowd near the stage decides we must be the band and the entire school of 3278 liquored up O’Bollingers and O’D’Adarios moves as one right up to the stage expectant and relieved that the band is finally starting. They whistle and clap and jostle around to get a better spot.

Then they seem to realize, in one large awakening moment, that we are not holding instruments. No, there’s nary a Uillean Pipe nor a fiddle in sight. What we are holding is almost empty Guinness glasses. A collective light bulb goes on over the crowd. They are not the band someone murmurs, and the murmur grows like wildfire as it spreads from O’Dingindorf to O’ Castillo and on around the bar.

Unfortunately, this incident of mistaken identity just served to alert the 3278 liquored-up- almost-Irish-previously-unaware ( gimme another Guinness) spectators to the fact that the band was not in the house and it was now an hour and a half past show time. The murmurs accelerate and changed into something like “where the *%*!#@%! is the %*&!^% ing band”. We figured this was the ideal time to exit stage left, which was just a few elbowed steps from the building exit.

Being early yet, we agreed to head towards the car, but on the way, pop into any pubs we passed, just to take a peek and have a quick Guinness. I was happy to be the designated driver because it turned out there were 17 Irish pubs along the 2 block walk back to the car. My pseudo-Irish party friends were three sheets to the wind by the time I delivered them safely to my front door where the “everybody’s-to-mature-to-take-unnecessary risks-and-try-to-drive-home” impromptu pajama party was about to begin. After all, the wee ones were tucked away with their Aunties and Nannas, the wolf hounds were fed, and the wind was howling across the bog. No need to go beyond the pale.