The One With Shamrock (cold, wet) Fest

Apparently every year, DC has a huge, giant, St. Patrick's day festival that involves bands and booze. Ryan and I heard about it and were pretty excited to go to it. We purchased some tickets, Ryan got out of drill early and luckily I got off work in time to hit up the festivities. First of all, we road the metro down there and it was insanely packed with people wearing crazy green outfits. This probably should have been our first indication of what was in store. I wish I could have taken a picture of the sea of people getting off the metro at the Stadium-Armory stop, but, I did not and just imagine that it was like when I took a picture of the metro during Inauguration, only more people in green. 

Anywhoodle, I should also note that it was cold, and rainy, but we had already paid for our tickets and the beer was included so we figured why not. (The website also had mentioned several fun INDOOR and outdoor events, so we figured we would be able to go inside and get dry if need be, but I will discuss what this "fun" "indoor" event"s" really entailed. 

The event also included, evidently, carnival rides. Is it just me, or does it seem like an incredibly bad idea to include carnival rides (particularily those gravity ones like the kids from the Sandlot threw up on) at a beer fest? Needless to say, we did not partake in the rides, no need to get vommed on in the name of St. Patrick. 

Overall it was a really cool event. Had it even just been sunny, even if it was cold, I think it would have been an A+ event. There were a few different stages (the website had claimed 9, but we found 4) and lots of little booths (where we purchased more clothes when we started to freeze our fannies off) and food and such. 

The indoor event that we encountered was actually a sideshow, and involved a girl putting herself in a straight jacket and trying to escape, and a guy who swallowed swords and bent up hangers. The latter was kind of eerily fascinating, but I had to look away when he swallowed a 2 ft sword that went all the way into his stomach. Thanks but no thanks. 

Hopefully next year it will be sunny and we can recruit some friends to attend with us, although Ryan did stalk and befriend a guy wearing an Oregon sweatshirt...