Once More, With Greening - Celebrating St. Patrick on the Chicago River 2014

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 I came.  I saw.  I took a lot of pictures.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Seriously, for these last two, click on the image to sell full-size

 

River turns Green; Spectators turn Blue - Chicago celebrate's St. Patrick's Day at end of a cold winter

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The Wendella tour boats will be missing this year, still locked in by ice, but this Saturday, March 15th, at 9:30 a.m. the Chicago River will again be lined with spectators as the city celebrates St. Patrick's day by turning the waterway emerald green.

We've covered this event for so many years, from so many angles, that it's hard to find a new take, but here's some never-before published video from last year, plus a few of our favorite photos.

St. Patrick's Day/Green River/2013

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There and somewhere else, concurrently

Otto Meyer: This is no place for a convertible!

An Orangeman at St. Patrick's Day

Got Irish?

That's Right: It's the Chicago River. Oh Yeah: It's Green, Really Green - It's St. Patrick's Day in Chicago!

St. Patrick's Day, March 17?  Not in Chicago,  Here's it's the Saturday closest to the 17th, and this year that's the 16th. The ceremony of the speedboats, turning orange dye to a green river, has an official start time of 10:00 a.m., but arrive early.  Best viewing along the river from Columbus Drive to Michigan Avenue.  The annual parade kicks off at Columbus and Balbo at noon.

Last year, we lucked out, with temperatures heading towards the 70's.  This year, we head in the opposite direction - it'll be a cold day in Chicago when they dye the river green. 
And in a sign of sheer bravado - or wild recklessness - that new Howells and Hood restaurant we previously wrote about - 600 seats, three major bars, 114 different varieties of beer and 360 draft handles,  �the most in the world,� according to Bottleneck Management's Chris Bisaillon, will be opening at 9:00 a.m, Saturday, in Tribune Tower just yards from the teeming throngs of revelers along the river.

To get you in mood, at top of this post there's a look at what dyeing the river looks like from an aeriel view, and below a photo gallery from two years past . . .



Created with flickr slideshow from softsea. move your mouse over the image area to hide and display menus. click on individual images for more options
two more short short videos . . .


Still not enough?  Check our reports from past years:
Return of the Emerald City: Chicago dyes the river green for St. Patrick's Day, 2010.

  

click here                                    click here

 

Urban WTF: Did Forever Marilyn Flick Away her Cigarette on Pioneer Plaza?

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No, it's not the latest from J. Seward Johnson, whose super-sized Marilyn Monroe sculpture, Forever Marilyn,  dominated Pioneer Plaza across Michigan Avenue from the Wrigley Building for over a year.  And there's no evidence she took a last puff on a cigarette and threw it to the ground just before she got into the limo.

Still there it is, in all its glory, a giant cigarette butt that actually makes you feel nostalgic for all those controversial sculptures that previously made the plaza their home.

It's an advertising prop next to a tent pushing the charms of the stop-smoking gun Nicorette to passing addicts who may be increasingly eager to kick the habit now that Cook County has added another dollar of tax, raising the per-pack price to $6.67.  The real addicts may well be governments state, county and city, which have grown increasingly dependent on cigarette tax revenues to plug budget holes.  Each hike brings lower revenues.  Governments grow desperate for their next fix, and eventually find their way to raising taxes again.  Rinse and repeat.

Howells and Hood - Back From the Dead

 On the other side of the plaza, whose derelict shabbiness we wrote about last November, things are actually looking up.

Workers are putting finishing touches on a new restaurant, Howells & Hood, named after the architects of Tribune Tower.  Raymond Hood, who also led the design team on Rockefeller Center in New York, died in 1934.  His partner John Mead Howells died in 1959.  Which is probably for the best, since there's a good chance if they weren't dead already, the huge glass and metal box that's now popped up next to their faux Gothic tower would send them to their graves, so they could spin in them.

The new eatery is replacing what was previously offices and studios for WGN Radio.

If Howells & Hood is successful, it should go a long way to bringing life to the underpopulated plaza,  with seating for 600 diners and a barrel of beer in the cooler for every one of them.  Fortunately, the restaurant isn't scheduled to open until April, which means we still have a year's grace until having to contemplate the consequences of putting all that beer in such close proximity to the party-on revelers that fill up the plaza when they dye the Chicago River green for St. Patrick's Day.