Saturday, March 12: the Chicago River is dyed green. Too early in the day for me, but I did see it live for the first time in 2009. I went by in early afternoon, and as always completely missed the parade downtown. No signs of it at all except vendors, and teens on the way to drunkenness.
I guess I wasn't in the right place to see the river bright green:
But Monday the 14th (no longer any South Side Irish Parade on St. Pat's Sunday to endure), I heard from someone on Twitter that the river was still green, so I biked the miles downtown and back just to check it out. Taken from a little west of the previous shot, it's greener. I don't get it...more sunlight? The dye shifted in the river?
I had my first visit inside Hoosier Mama Pie Co. on W. Chicago on the way back (though I had had their pies before), a rare time they were open on a Monday, for Pi Day (3/14).
On St. Patrick's itself, I checked my Twitter list of Chicago businesses to see who had good specials. Swim Cafe on W. Chicago, a place I don't get to nearly enough (especially since they have the lowest-priced bottomless coffeeshop coffee I've seen in the greater West Town/Wicker Park/Logan Square area--$2.25 when I've seen $3, $3.50). I had the Irish stew I'd read about, a creamy vegetable soup. With bread: this was a lovely presentation. Breaking the square format here:
I biked home with a couple goodies for later. This was the only overt sign of the day, seen on Milwaukee Ave. around 3:15 pm:
I stopped at the local liquor store later. Guinness seemed too obvious so I picked an Irish cider. This is the corned beef and cabbage hand pie I got from Hoosier Mama before the Swim visit, and a green velvet cupcake from Swim. There was a chocolate-beer one, but I'd had a Guinness chocolate cupcake from Milwaukee last week. And a vegan one; I was curious but only wanted to buy one, and I've been hooked on red velvet for a couple years now. (I'm sure someone somewhere does a blue velvet cupcake...)
The hand pie was fantastic. Notice you can almost see through the bag. The cider was fine and cupcake delicious. Beyond that: completely avoided bars, all week. I'm curious about Irish soda bread and wondering if I can still find some post-March 17...
