After the initial charge of the Shamrock Run, which kicked off from the Academy Green, well over half the crowd wasn’t running at all. Just walking. Half stepping. Good-humored and dour alike. Pushing strollers and pulling toddlers down the revitalized Broadway Avenue.
Through the traffic circle and past Keegan’s Ale, past the parking lot of the Broadway Bubble where the anarchists used to hang out.
Past the Bonesteel house, from inside which Radio Kingston broadcasts, through the midtown blocks of stores and shops, interspersed more and more frequently with South and Central American and Mexican cuisine. Past the undisputed live music hub of Kingston, Tubbys, then down under the CSX train overpass and up again past the ghost of the old post office, the YMCA and the armory and the statue of the boxer, Billy Costello Jr.
Past the cheery red-brick-colored city hall and the imposing gray highschool building across from it, which looks like an old world university, past the old hospital, and a spate of new bougie, upscale breed of bars on Broadway, led by Sonder and Mirador.
After all these businesses die out past West Chester Street, at the funeral home the road begins its downward curves, makes a sharp turn and descends from the hills to the water, passing the churches, the police station and the brick row townhomes, into the final bottleneck of boutique and vanity shops, pricey used furniture, interior décor. A wine shop. A coffee shop and restaurants. The runners having run, it all ends at the creek, where the previous day and night’s pouring rain has swollen the waters and overtopped the bulwarks of the Strand in places as the high tide comes pushing in from the Hudson. Winner take nothing.
The weather never got out of the 40’s and the sun came and mostly went. Dressed in flashes of green and warm clothing all along the route, spectators are scattered and milling about along the sidewalks along the avenue. Some of the unhoused are there as well, mostly on that Midtown stretch of Broadway Ave from the Spotlight Diner to the Ulster County performing Arts center with their travel bags and assorted accouterments gathered on the benches around them.
The Shamrock Run now in its 35th year, but why are we running?
On that first flat stretch of Broadway, three hundred feet away from the city hall, the halfway point of the run is Kelly’s Shamrock Tavern, ten years younger than the run itself. So says Larry, bartender, owner by blood. He’s donned a kilt for the occasion but acknowledges the costume is Scottish. But kilts are magical, free flowing, useful things beyond their Tartan Plaid.
Leather or dyed denim utility kilts have come into favor among the bolder carpenters in some quarters.
With the parade still blocks away the runners begin to appear jogging past the window of the bar.
Already full, the Shamrock is a drinker’s bar. Opening at 8:30 in the morning, pints of Budweiser and Bloody Marys flow cheaply regardless of the hour, careless of the sunlight.
The day’s festivity provides a sort of wreathy mistletoe underneath which tourists and debutantes eager for a debauch can mingle shoulder to shoulder, elbow to elbow, alongside those veterans of the urge, those obeyers of that most profound thirst.
So it is with every pagan rooted occasion. On Christmas, New Years Eve, Halloween and Easter, if not forgotten, class antipathy is temporarily set aside. Raising a glass in sight of one another, moral strictness dissipates and the counter-purposed ranks of society observe a truce.
In spite of some of the gibberish, politically damaged declarations and highly suspicious claims asserted in that barroom, even the oldest drinkers among them have bright eyes today.
One woman, excited by the spectacle of the increasing numbers of runners outside, declared that in her time as a young track star she could run a mile in one minute and forty-three seconds. Her memory beat the current world record by two minutes.
A bartender with a day off, mustached and tattooed, wary of the press, says he ran varsity cross country in highschool. But he’s given up running.
“Nothing happened to my knees or hips,” he says. “I just don’t go out of my way to do physical exercise.”
A woman leans in to interrupt, with a voice like a drowning sailor.
“So did I,” she says, “but I broke both my knees.”
Maybe so. Asked whether the St. Patrick’s day parade was a genuine or manufactured reason to run, the off-duty bartender answers cannily.
“Both,” he says. “ I mean, no-one celebrates St. Bridget’s day, which happened, you know, last month. I mean, Groundhog’s day is derivative of it but no-one celebrates that.”
Everyone in this corner of the bar is savvy to the fact that today’s holiday is a ploy, the real thing is still a week away. They find consensus in the sentiment that it’s just a handy excuse to capitalize on, for profit, so why not celebrate two St. Paddy’s Days? Besides, says the off-duty bartender, if the city held the celebration on the real day, they’d suffer from low turnout, the crowds drawn away to the larger metropolitan antipodes of Albany and New York City.
Ignoring whys and wherefores of the fake holiday, real enough outside the open door with the street celebration drifting in, Bill Martin, a man striving in the middle of his forties, wearing a longish grizzled beard and longer hair done into braids at the back, ponders about the meaning of the race.
“Normally you’re running. I don’t know, away from something, to escape something or to get something… to hunt something,” he says. “And they’re running just because they like doing it in groups and being part of parades. There’s people around watching.”
Martin had also run in his youth. Was familiar with the runner’s high, the flush of endorphins which reward the unwavering effort. The longer the distance, the bigger the fix, as any runner will tell you.
“When my back was better,” recalled Martin. “This was before ten or so years in the audio production business. A lot of lifting.”
The run was less important to Martin than the parade element which followed it. It was the fraternal order of the Ancient Hibernians, squeezing the cloth-covered air bladders, creating a plaid colored racket, with berets on their heads and tassels swinging at their kilt-covered-crotches as they marched past the bar on Broadway which caught Martin’s fancy.
Augmented with snare drums and fifes, highland militaries used to harness and deploy this cacophony to announce impending violence. Centuries have cooled the blood. Now the blasts of the bagpipe announce parades and funerals.
“That was my favorite part,” says Martin. “I’m sort of a sound-oriented person. I love music. And that was nice. Any sort of instrument, especially something droney like that sort of takes me away, you know. Takes me somewhere else.”
His cheekbones prominent when he smiles, Martin professes his Scotch-Irish blood. And he’s not the only one. Another man in the bar introduces himself as Winston. Irish, he says. Hold the Scotch. The barroom is full of comedians.
Having overheard the topic, Winston considers the question of why we run.
“There’s no one chasing them,” points out Winston. “We run from something. An occupier. Some colonizing invading force. The Irish understood that. In my family we still call the English flag the butcher’s apron.”
A second generation American, Winston says he recognizes the inspiration of the immigrants coming to Kingston now, though he’s unclear what South American countries they are coming from.
“Doesn’t matter. People don’t leave home unless they’re hungry,” Winton says. “It’s that simple.”
Immediately a large ruddy man with sparse white hair standing wild on his pate, breaks in and disputes Winton’s point, claiming that health care and housing in New York made free for immigrants rather than for Americans is what’s behind the arriving tide.
“Just try to deny it,” he challenges anyone in earshot. He won’t give his name and drags Winston into a low voiced discussion about an insidious welfare state.
Outside the window, a bunch of cops, new recruits by the look of them, go running by in a two-ranked formation. They aren’t chasing anything either, but they put on a handsome, hygienic show. They wear no armor. Gunless and brave.
It’s good to sit in the dark bar, and watch the festivities outside the window. Two young women dance a sort of herky-jerky, hopping jig, side-by-side close behind a sedan down the middle of the avenue. Old dance moves meant to inflame the blood of young suitors and remind the old men of their tragic infirmity.
No gunshots, no bottle rockets, no artillery marred the day. Like a poet laureate invited to recite a few words at a municipal inauguration ceremony, given brass instruments, a teenager’s passion can be safely diverted if it gets carried away.
Crashing cymbals approach and pounding bass drums. The community’s heartbeat entrusted to the most inexperienced. The Kingston High School marching band. But the outfits are clean and smart looking. Hats with chin straps. Coats with Prussian rows of buttons. There’s no baton twirling virgins here. The brass horns shine even under the clouds.
A young filmmaker in the bar, fresh-faced and enigmatic, introduces himself as Emrys, a Welsh name.
“I always enjoy a marching band,” he says. “Nothing beats a marching band.”
It’s hard to get a read on Emrys, who offers opinions out of both sides of his mouth.
He says: “I was pretty sad to see that the Noble crony police state administration has once again cracked down on the essence of spirit in this town. Just removing any trace of original cultural legitimacy from this event and selling out to corporate sponsors.”
He laughs at his own words and then corrects them: “No, I think it’s really cute. Everyone’s smiling today. Sometimes parades there’s like a weird kind of cynical f*** America thing going on. But I think everyone’s just having fun. It’s great. And I’m happy to see local businesses getting their due.
“The Triangle bar got a float today,” he points out. “They’re a bar on Delaware Avenue that doesn’t really have a sign…Yeah, it’s a cop bar.”
Why not a cement mixer flying flags, with burly workers in high-res vests and construction hats receiving the applause? Where are the garbage workers riding on the backs of their haulers? Where are the plumbers and the construction workers and the linemen of the telephone poles? Maybe in the crowd. Maybe running.
Buy the swill and drink it and watch a sports game in the corner if the parade doesn’t do it. Let the runners scramble by, chased by nothing. But there are always apparitions attending the ceremonial. The distant sound of baying hounds precedes a glimpse, a gang of mustached men on horseback riding by dressed in red coats and jodhpurs, swinging riding crops and blowing trumpets, running the runners down. The runners dressed as foxes and the spectators singing a funerary round: Why are we running?
If there’s anyone left to remember it, the past is never really gone.
“Like the Pauline Oliveros deep listening plaza,” says Taylor. “Used to be the Kings Inn… a hot sheet motel.”
The Kingston of the now approaches the beatific, sanitary and flush with charity culled from the public larder of the state, scooped like thick cream before it can curdle. But it’s the Irish Cultural Center Hudson Valley who dispenses the bread and provides the circus today on this particular occasion.
While the website estimated that 4,500 runners would attend, as of two hours before the starting gun just 2,432 confirmed entrants had registered for the chance to run two miles down a city street and keep track of their own times. At $30 each, if pre-registering, or paying $35 to registering on the day of, it’s still a good haul. The Shamrock Run Committee pulled in at least $72,960 dollars on this number alone.
This doesn’t include the numbers solicited from Shamrock Run sponsors like the Mid Hudson Valley Federal Credit Union and WMC Health Alliance, who pay anywhere from $500 to $3,000 to have their names attached to the festivities and underwrite the printed t-shirts and complimentary medals.
Every year, a $10,000 check is promised to be cut for a worthy recipient – this year’s beneficiary is MentorMe, CEO Stephanie Kresser’s non-profit mentoring program which “aims to provide positive role models” for children who otherwise lack them.
What happens to the rest is a question for president of the ICCHV, William B. Kearney. Not currently in the Shamrock, Kearney is also vice president of that bagpipe squeezing Hibernian Order, that fraternal organization who throws the Hooley on the Hudson every year in September.
Came past then a briar patch of politicians unadorned, carrying low before them a vinyl banner. The county government, it said. The county executive was there with her communications specialist and her head of diversity. All smiles but for a daughter in tow, her face a mask of gloomy adolescent discontent. A few scattered councilmembers trot along behind handing out candy. Throwing baubles had been disallowed, on account of the clean-up job which will be waiting for the tender ministrations of the DPW.
They walk past the business flying the shamrock sigil. As good as place to seek shelter as any. A foot race by any other name. Why are we drinking
This must mean something. Trotting out the old traditions like a crippled horse decorated with ribbons.
The bar is cool and dark and everyone inside knows the score. The streets are orderly and the parents bring their children out to give them some idea of community. Commemorate the day.
Why are we running?
The prize is belonging, for the length of a race. The duration of a parade. There’s a clock provided, but you’re free to take your time. To see and be seen while we’re under the sun. Under the clouds. A rite of spring, neutered and spayed. If it’s that the sap is rising, it’s a harmless enough run through a dream. And everywhere there’s a gentle stirring in the trees.
You can bag your own groceries. You can do as you please.
Join the family! 
