A legacy of brevity in Boulder

With patio chairs and a new beer garden, tiny parade marches on, but only for a block

Boston has long staked claim to the first St. Patrick’s Day celebration in the American colonies, but many people don’t know that the very first-ever St. Patrick’s Day parade — in the world — took place in St. Augustine, Fla., on March 17, 1601, in a Spanish colony under the direction of the colony’s Irish vicar.

It’s been more than 400 years since the vicar and those colonists threw the original rager, but the luck of the Irish has transcended the centuries, with nearly every major (and minor) city in the U.S. throwing green-tinged parades each year in honor of the holiday.

One of those cities is, of course, Boulder. While the parade pulls out all of the usual St. Patty’s Day stops — beer, Irish dancers and people wearing an egregious amount of green flair — one feature about Boulder’s parade sets it apart from the hundreds of others thrown across the nation: It stakes its claim as the shortest St. Patrick’s Day parade in the world. Over the years, other cities have tried to rip the green carpet out from under Boulder’s claim with their own “shortest” declarations, but we’re biased, so we’re sticking with Boulder’s case.

At noon on Sunday, the tradition returns to downtown Boulder for its 41st year (barring the dreaded 2020) — to its newer location, on Pearl Street between 15th and 16th streets. The parade formerly stood ground on the block of 13th Street in front of the now-defunct Conor O’neill’s until the Irish pub shuttered in 2017.

Through the changes, however, the distance (one block) and spirit of the parade remain the same.

According to local legend, this sacred Boulder tradition began when customers at the nowclosed J.J. Mccabe’s spontaneously decided to parade around the Walnut Street block to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day. Spanning almost four decades, the event was later taken over by Conor O’neill’s, then followed by Boulder Beer Company for a short stint.

The Odd Fellows took the reigns during the pandemic, and are excited to keep the tradition going, said President of the Odd Fellows, Jim Carr.

“It’s pretty local, and you get to know the characters that show up every year pretty well. It’s important to keep that kind of community alive,” Carr said.

This year will feature a new addition — a beer garden serving up brews from Upslope Brewing, Wibby Brewing and Mountain Sun Pub, because no Irishamerican

celebration is complete without a nice frothy pint.

Upslope Brewery founder Matt Cutter has been a longtime paradegoer, having first discovered the microparade when he moved to Boulder 30 years ago. In recent years, Cutter has become an essential part of the World’s Shortest St. Patrick’s Day Parade after resurrecting the beloved Paddy O’furniture Lawn Chair Drill Team.

“When I first saw the parade all those years ago, I remember being completely struck by the lawn chair drill team,” Cutter said. “I was drawn to it, and just thought it was such an important and awesome part of the parade — it made it totally unique.”

After Conor O’neill’s took over the parade in 1999 from J.J. Mccabe’s, Cutter said he remembers noticing that the lawn chair drill team was no longer active in the festivities.

“Upon realizing there was no more drill team, I pretty much told my friends that we were going to reinstate the tradition of the lawn chair drill team,” Cutter said. “And the next year, we were in it.”

Now, Cutter serves as the team’s “drill captain,” leading the group of lawn chair dancers in practices, choreographing dances and even repairing broken parts of the vintage aluminum chairs — an inevitable reality of dancing with decades-old lawn furniture.

“Those chairs are not really designed to withstand what we do to them when we’re dancing,” Cutter said. “We have about three or four chair casualties every year, and we have to keep finding new chairs to use.”

Cutter said that not just any old outdoor portable chair will do — the lawn chairs must be the old-school, lightweight folding chairs made of aluminum and nylon webbing, to get that perfect clanking sound when used in the dance routine.

This year, around 20 or so dancers have signed up to participate in the parade — many of them art first-timers. According to Cutter, the new additions are exciting, but there are advantages to being a longtime team member.

“Before the parade, we hold several practice sessions in North Boulder Park,” Cutter said. “The seasoned veterans know it’s good to get to the practices early because they know which are the good chairs.”

Lawn chair troubles aside, the Paddy O’furniture Lawn Chair Drill Team manages to bring the house down every year with colorful renditions of “We Will Shamrock You” and their signature dance moves.