Cabbages, potatoes and carrots will not fly overhead in the Irish Channel for the second year in a row, but there’s no reason to stew over a subdued St. Patrick’s Day in the era of covid restrictions. Cravings for a celebration will be met by Shamrock Our Blocks, a grassroots do-it-yourself initiative for the upcoming holiday.
As the pandemic stretches past the one-year mark in mid-March, the annual Irish Channel St. Patrick’s Day parade that draws thousands to the Uptown neighborhood named for its 19th-century immigrant population has been canceled for a second time. Though crowds will not gather along Magazine Street and St. Charles Avenue for this high-spirited rite of spring—best known for legions of tuxedoed lads exchanging paper carnations for a kiss and float riders tossing every ingredient but corned beef and mutton for a traditional feast—enterprising locals have come up with a safe alternative for indulging in all things Irish.
Prior to crowd restrictions imposed by the covid pandemic, the Irish Channel St. Patrick’s Day parade typically drew thousands of revelers dressed in green to Magazine Street. Photo by Infrogmation of New Orleans.
Shamrock Our Blocks encourages homeowners to deck out their yards and porches with cloverleafs, leprechauns and other symbols of a holiday that honors the saint who legend says rid the Emerald Isle of snakes in the fifth century. The goal is to make a house-to-house driving, biking or walking tour, similar to the Krewe of House floats phenomenon this past Mardi Gras. Participating households might even be encouraged to toss throws—beads, trinkets, and perhaps a reduced but anticipated bounty of vegetables.
Brian Moore, a Chicago transplant who operates the bike tour company Paved Paradise, copied the idea from the South Side Irish Parade organization in Chicago. That group, in turn, launched a house-decorating contest inspired by the Mardi Gras house-float craze that came to redefine a 2021 Carnival season in New Orleans that lacked parades and mass gatherings.
For Moore, a son of Chicago’s heavily Irish American neighborhood of Beverly, participation in the South Side St. Patrick’s Day parade has been a lifelong family ritual. He brought that love of ancestral heritage when he relocated to Lousiana. He has marched in the Irish Channel parade and is a founding member of the New Orleans Irish Famine Orphans Society. “I’ve been an expat here for almost a decade,” he said. “My original goal was to bring the South Side to New Orleans and have other Chicago ex-pats decorate their houses—maybe four or five total. But like things do lately, it just exploded in popularity after making a Facebook group. More than a dozen are now in construction.”
Edward Cox and Vatican Lokey of Old Metairie were among early enthusiasts for the porch-decorating phenomenon. Photo courtesy of Edward Cox.
Among those who signed up early was Edward Cox in Old Metairie. Even without prodding from the Facebook group, the professional set designer and owner of Simply Stunning Designs had been adapting decorations on his porch with each successive holiday, beginning with Halloween followed by Christmas and Mardi Gras. He recalled a time decades ago when decorating houses and businesses was more common during Carnival season.
“What’s new this year is employing professional artists to do the job, like float builders and theater designers,” Cox said. His house displays all the trappings of St. Patrick’s Day, including a a rainbow that extends from the porch to a pot of gold in the yard. The house will be featured in a WGNO television news broadcast about Shamrock Our Blocks.
“We needed to revive this tradition now to pick up our spirits and continue to create magic.”
As part of an official partnership, a map of both New Orleans and Chicago house floats will be available online following a March 10 deadline to register by joining the Shamrock Our Block Facebook group or emailing [email protected].
