Log0052 | St. Patrick I

March 17th, 4 minutes to 5 o'clock, we walked past Johnny Foley’s Irish House in San Francisco. Green dress, green purse, green girlfriends, bleach blonde hair and an already strapped up wrist, the woman outside yelled towards her friends. The sign above, with a clock running a little fast, read: Time For a Pint!. But this woman needed no reminder, she was already totally wasted, smashed, sloshed, trollied…. I wished I’d remembered the appropriate Irish word to describe that inebriated state many achieve on this sacred day.   

I wanted to say the woman and her group were frequenting their local, but nope. I suspected this was more of a spot where she came exactly once per year. Not a local. Just a pub where the bandwagon could quench their thirst on the day of Saint Patrick. Or rather, the day of Saint Patrick's death to be more precise. 

The woman had drifted past middle age and was well on the way to being that tragic figure drunkenly stumbling after her youth, only to end up with her head in a toilet bowl and a friend holding back her hair. Followed by a wild, wild, hangover. Her tattoos made me wonder about that youth, now well faded they traced a different form; a thicker leg, a looser upper arm. 

All that to be said, it didn’t matter. She was having a grand time. Her and her friends were living their lives full. They were cutting loose, just for the hell of it. I was not the only one to take note and smile either. Standing off a few feet away, a nearly invisible old lady was acting as security. She made a big grin as she watched the trainwreck. I felt like I could hear her thinking God only knows where you lot will be in a few more hours.