Luck of the Irish — no rain on parade
Market Street is awash with green as S.F. celebrates St. Patrick’s Day
San Francisco celebrated all things green — shamrocks, hats and kilts, but not the green that’s smoked — with its 167th annual St. Patrick’s Day parade Saturday, drawing thousands of spectators to Market Street.
Under skies that threatened to rain, but didn’t, the sun peeked out just enough to cast a brilliant sheen on balloons, pipers, marching bands and contingents of politicians and public safety officials in the largest such parade west of the Mississippi. Its 128 floats boasted more than 5,000 participants, including Grand Marshal Bill Welch, who knows where the Irish community’s secrets are buried as owner of Duggan Welch Mortuary on 17th Street.
But Saturday, of course, was about the living, and revelers were exuberant.
“We are an immigrant story, as a community here in San Francisco, and we’re here to celebrate our heritage,” Mayor Mark Farrell said at the parade’s starting point at Second and Market streets. “John Geary was our first mayor; Sam Brannan printed the first newspaper in San Francisco; Michael O’Shaughnessy, who built the dam that created the Hetch Hetchy water system — we’ve had amazing lead-
ers in our city with Irish backgrounds. We celebrate them, but we celebrate our Irish community that’s here today and the incredible efforts they’re making today. As a mayor with Irish roots, there’s nothing better.”
The parade kicked off at 11:30 a.m., led by the Irish Pipers of San Francisco, the reedy wails of their bagpipes reverberating off the concrete towers of the Financial District. They were followed by the United Irish Society, a squad of 36 carrying flags representing the 32 counties of Ireland and its four provinces.
Other parade marchers and entrants included San Francisco Sheriff Vicki Hennessy; San Francisco Fire Chief Joanne Hayes-White; Robert O’Driscoll, the Irish consul general, and his wife, Caoimhe McEnhill; members of the San Francisco Police Department, with green carnations in the lapels of their uniforms; Carpenters Local 22; the Irish Immigration Pastoral Center, with one of the liveliest floats featuring ’60s rock music; and a contingent of fourth- through eighth-graders enrolled in the Owl Music program playing the theme from the “Pink Panther” films.
The Henry Mancini score may not have had anything to do with St. Patrick’s Day, but it didn’t matter to saxophone player Marcus Villareal, 9, who was just happy to be in the parade. “It’s the best song I know,” he said.
As the parade wended along Market Street to Civic Center plaza, a few of the several thousand viewers found readymade seats by perching themselves atop Ford GoBikes locked into stationary slots at the curb.
But Tom Gowin, a California Highway Patrol officer who drove in with his family from Riverbank (Stanislaus County), near Modesto, to watch the parade and celebrate his Irish heritage, settled into a portable chair he’d brought. He recognized Farrell, the new mayor, walking the parade in a lowkey green sweater, not from TV, but because “he spoke at the Mass we attended at St. Patrick’s” before the parade.
The celebration included a festival at the parade’s end point at Civic Center Plaza, with music from Time Hill and Autumn Rhodes, the Jerry Hannan Band, Culann’s Hounds and the Irish Newsboys (composed of current and former Chronicle staffers, among others), as well as local arts and crafts purveyors and nonprofits from the Irish community. Even though she had no Irish roots, Janet Koga came from Orange County to watch the parade with her husband and family. Two of their children were performing in the Beckman High School marching band, which traveled up from Irvine.
“We’re mixed — my husband is Japanese, I’m Korean, and the kids are half,” she said. “I think the world is growing closer. I think it’s great that we all mix and get along like this.”