Parade Day Bonanza

Hey dad,

Here's some insight into my job and where I'm living. Feel free to scold me for its contents! haha

This weekend in the town I'm living in was a special event called parade day. It is, obviously a day with a huge parade that blocks off the whole downtown area and makes traveling a pain in the ass.

That said, it is also the town's St. Patrick's day celebration and this year was its 50th anniversary, or so I've heard. Starting in 1967 it was created to celebrate the large Irish community contributions to the town, specifically the police and firemen who happened to be largely Irish (a thought that hardly surprised me at all). Originally being a cute little 20 minute parade, by last year there were roughly 500- 600 people joining the march. Unfortunately when I arrived downtown I had all but missed the parade entirely meeting up with the last few marchers and was surprised to find the local garbage truck company in their red trucks decorated and ready to party.

Seriously ridiculous. I love it.

Every year alumni from the nearby colleges would only come to town on this occasion and it became such a fun tradition that students began to look forward to it.

Having lived hear for two years I knew about it from day one, but thought of it as total anarchy and a massive event that I definitely did not want to get involved in. Why? Well, it's a St. Patrick's day celebration. That always spells bad news bears to me in the form of alcohol abuse. And it certainly is, hell I had a friend who was vomiting before even leaving the house and entirely missed the parade. It is a party day where everyone starts drinking  in the morning, takes a nap to rest their hangovers in the afternoon, and then crawl back to the bars for a possibly horrible round two.

Earlier I mentioned that students really looked forward to it. And they REALLY look forward to it, every year receiving messages from the deans of students saying "be careful, don't be stupid, just, don't even drive". And it's no wonder they're like that. The town is known for becoming insanely packed and when you mix that with alcohol fun gets mixed in with un-fun things. Two years ago a woman my age lost her leg to a drunk driver on a bridge, and last year some frat-boy genius thought that it would be fun to hit bottles off a roof with a baseball bat, and well:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3491441/Serves-right-Hilarious-moment-reveller-tries-smash-beer-bottle-roof-baseball-bat-ends-launching-edge.html#v-7353668575339495951

(if you can't watch it, the genius falls)

On top of that last fall/winter a student (who, incidentally, was a friend of a friend of mine) was killed in a car accident involving a drunk driver, and I'm sure there were multiple arrests of students last year which all lead to my school shutting it down. This year we had a mid-winter break which blind-sighted everyone who didn't make the time connection with the popular drinking festival. Everyone had to go home unless they were off- campus or international students.

being a part- time bartender, I was dreading parade day. Even with the students gone I knew it was going to be a beerfest of proportions I really didn't want to contend with. Now I can handle drunkenness. The reason for my hesitancy was the headaches. Let me explain.

Hookah is like cigarets on steroids ( while vaping is like cigarets on cocaine AND steroids). Being essentially a waterbong for tobacco it allows deep drags that bring the nicotine rush to you like a pack of cigarets easily. That nicotine rush also comes with something else, teeny tiny doses of carbon monoxide. And people like me who quality test the hookahs we make (as you should do) could end up on nights like parade day smoking more than 40 individual hookahs a night. now one hookah can give you a small headache (which is thought to be caused by minor carbon monoxide poisoning) if smoked for three hours, and if I smoke one to five drags on 40 hookahs for an entire shift, I'm taking in more than one hookah's three hours worth in a shorter amount of compounded time.

Parade day actually wasn't that bad. I got to work early in fear of not finding a parking spot (found one, over a mile walk in below freezing temperatures from work) got to my bar and had some fun with a few friends before getting to work, even just visiting only two bars and having a few good laughs really set me in a good mood before making hookahs.

Everything was green!

Actually it was a pretty dead day until around 7:00 largely because of the stark absence of students. (who plan on having a parade day part 2 next weekend so I'm a little iffy about March from now on)

My coworkers and I had enough time to snap a quick pic

 since we were all together at once, which never happens

I for the first time since working there actually started on an empty stomach and was quite worried about getting sick. I was so dizzy that I wanted to hurl for half of my shift, but I kept my composure and ended up alright in the end. We were so busy that everyone was running like chickens with their heads cut off. And I'd like to, at least here, apologize to everyone for having fun before work which surely slowed me down a bit when we clocked in. (worth it though)

Hope all is well

Love,

-Alexander