Irish luck tops electoral enthusiasm?

This weekend is going to be an event of great cultural significance to the reality of Chicago; something that gives us a large part of our character. Something that will get people nationwide talking about us. 

The Chicago River won't be the only body of water turning green -- the Daley plaza fountain also likely to take on color. Photo by Gregory Tejeda

Oh, and by the way, the early voting for the mayoral election run-off also starts this weekend.

BECAUSE ALL THOSE crowds coming to downtown Chicago on Saturday sure ain’t a gonna be headed for the Loop supersite, at 175 W. Washington St., which will be set up so that anybody living within the Chicago city limits can cast their ballots for mayor.

Lori Lightfoot, or Toni Preckwinkle?

Personally, I expect the pathetically low, near-record-setting, turnouts that we saw on Feb. 26 will recur themselves again for the April 2 run-off, with the early voting portion actually beginning Friday.

So yes, people can take a trip downtown Friday, Saturday or Sunday to cast their mayoral vote. Maybe even do so Saturday in and around attending the St. Patrick’s Day parade – the annual tradition that now takes place along Columbus Drive.

Will Lightfoot top Preckwinkle (below) … 

BUT I DON’T expect a lot of people to turn out to cast their ballots. The Luck of the Irish will probably mean too much green-dyed beer being consumed for people to even want to think of casting a ballot.

Even though all those Irish politicos of the past would probably think that casting a vote, particularly if for a “Machine” candidate of Irish-American ethnic origins, is the ultimate gesture of cultural support one could show.

Perhaps if it were Toni O’Preckwinkle on the ballot, she’d be able to get more excitement from would-be voters. Or if Alderman Edward M. Burke hadn’t have won his Feb. 26 election so handily?

… for public attention, or … 

But I suspect this weekend will be about people trying to find the appropriate way of celebrating St. Patrick’s Day, the date upon which the saint used his shillelagh to whack at snakes and chase them out of Ireland.

OR AT LEAST that’s what we were taught when I was in grade school. I suspect the reality of the holiday is to have an excuse for beer companies to push their product, similar to the way in which they have turned the Cinco de Mayo holiday into a generic Mexican fest.

Only I’ve never seen anybody dye the Chicago River a Red, White and Green tri-color mixture the way the city every year turns the city’s namesake river a bright, obnoxious Kelly green that in some ways looks even more sickly than the dingy shade of green the river takes on the rest of the year.

Seriously, those people who miss out on Saturday’s downtown parade can always venture out to the Beverly neighborhood’s South Side Irish parade for a chance to see the Irish bands and dancing girls work their way along Western Avenue, and the local residents will have to spend the rest of the day (and night) chasing away the overly-imbibed partiers who don’t have a proper sense of when it is to go home.

I’m sure all of this will be more on people’s minds than their mayoral vote. For all I know, they may view the St. Patrick’s festivities as an escape from the political nonsense that wishes it could overtake our lives for the next couple of weeks.

… will Madeline Mitchell top both on Saturday?

MAYBE THIS WEEKEND would be more intense if we’d have got a Daley, a Joyce or a McCarthy into the run-off election. But we didn’t. They didn’t have the Luck of the Irish back on Feb. 26

But we are getting closer to it all being over.

For Monday is the day that early voting extends to the neighborhood polling places. One site in each of the 50 wards, so that you can cast your vote without having to make the trip downtown.

Then on Election Day, you can go to the polling place located in your neighborhood proper. A chance to take part in this great American experience of Democracy – which also includes the four-year follow-up period of voters ranting and raging on how stupid the electorate was for choosing the nitwit who ultimately prevails April 2.

  -30-

Has Mother Nature developed a multi-color hue for Chicago's namesake river

There’s one thing that anybody who’s native to Chicago knows for sure – our namesake river ain’t blue in color.

The natural muddy green of Chicago River. Photos by Gregory Tejeda

You might be able to look out to the east from downtown high rises and see a Lake Michigan that is a luscious blue in color and appears to extend off so far into the distance that you might mistake it for an ocean, rather than just a lake – albeit one of the Great Lakes that make the Midwestern U.S. so unique.

BUT EVERYBODY WHO’S ever spent time here knows the Chicago River, which the lake flows into so as to avoid having our sewage and waste wind up in our drinking water supply, knows our river water is different.

It has taken on a green hue. In fact, it has taken on different shades of green, and not just because of St. Patrick’s Day.

For on that March day, city officials go out of their way to add dyes to the river water (or at least the portion of the river that separates Downtown from the Near North Side) so that it becomes a bright Kelly green.

As opposed to the sickly, dingy green with a touch of brown to it that is the usual color of our namesake river.

Still some industry in downtown portions of Chicago River

IT’S ACTUALLY ONE of the local gags, the quality of our river. So tainted with sludge that it might almost be possible to walk across the water, even if you don’t happen to be Jesus Christ.

Or that one accidental tumble off a downtown bridge into the water and the biggest threat may not be that you’d drown, but that you’d become poisoned just by coming into contact with the water.

By comparison, salt piles along Chicago's 'other' river -- the Calumet

My own gag acknowledges the fact that the river water quality actually has improved in recent years – to where our river is no longer toxic, but is now merely polluted.

Despite all of these noxious comments (about as tainted as the river itself), I have to say I always considered the Chicago River – particularly the part of it that goes through downtown from Lake Michigan to the split between the south and north branches – to be a significant part of our city’s personality.

SO WHAT SHOULD we think about the fact our city’s river is now taking on distinct shades? Is it a split personality? A physical manifestation of Chicago’s character?

For what it’s worth, WLS-TV on Monday reported that since Friday and through the weekend, the river has taken on distinct shades of green. The south branch being the usual muddy green color that we usually associate with the river while the north branch has a brighter shade almost like that fake green trotted out every St. Patrick’s Day.

Is this Mother Nature’s way of saying we ought to celebrate St. Patty’s Day every day in Chicago?

Is the muddy green color appropriate as river passes Trump tower?

The Metropolitan Water Reclamation District and the Chicago Department of Water Management both told the television station that this multi-shade of green is actually natural, and not something we need to concern ourselves with. Not yet, anyway.

RECENT STORMS AND seasonal vegetation changes allegedly are responsible for the varying hues. Although further tests are supposedly still being taken to see if there’s going to be any lasting effect to Chicago River water.

Personally, I find this quirky – almost something to laugh about. Considering that Chicagoans of any sense know better than to drink directly from the river, and that we know it is still decades far in the future that one-time Mayor Richard J. Daley’s decades-old dream of people being able to fish in the Chicago River will become reality.

So as for our river, we’ll have to adapt to multi-shades of green, and let’s hope it doesn’t turn fiery red.

The Cleveland Indians baseball team may be closer to a World Series appearance than our Chicago White Sox, but we’re more than willing to let Cleveland and its Cuyahoga River (which caught fire due to the waste in the water back in 1969) be unique.

  -30-

¿What gaffe will Trump give us come the Cinco de Mayo holiday?

The word is getting out on how badly the Trumpites managed to botch the ceremonial fluff this week related to Ireland and St. Patrick’s Day.

Which is odd because, as the Washington Post reported, so many of the prominent people allied with Donald J. Trump’s presidency are of Irish-American descent – even though Trump himself is German/Scottish-American.

It's a wonder Trump didn't dig this sign out to post at White House

OF COURSE, THEY’RE also the kind of people who go around screeching and screaming at every opportunity that they’re “Real Americans!!!!” and none of that hyphenated American talk that they want to believe is what’s wrong with our society these days. Even though I suspect the real issue is many of them don’t know what they are!

So maybe we should give them the benefit of the doubt that they really didn’t have a clue as to how vacuous they were being on Thursday when officials from Ireland were in Washington, D.C., for rituals long associated with the White House to acknowledge the long-standing ties between the two nations and to show just how far our nation has come from the days of “No Irish Need Apply.”

Then again, it would be totally in character for the Trumpites to think it all essential to snub other people. Perhaps they think it shows superiority and strength. I think it merely shows boorishness.

Then again, being a boor has been tied into the Trump persona for so long. It probably is second nature.

SO HOW BAD was the behavior? According to the Washington Post:

·        Vice President Mike Pence managed to create rolled eyes with his initial greeting of “Top of the Morning” to the Irish delegation.

·        Trump managed to recite an “Irish proverb” that no one in the Irish delegation recognized ("Always remember to forget the friends who proved untrue, but never forget to remember those who stood by you"), and it turns out may actually be a line written by a Nigerian poet -- a gaffe only The Donald is capable of making.

·        House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., made an attempt at a joke by pointing out all the golf courses Trump has owned on his properties – apparently thinking that Ireland and Scotland (where the game was created) are identical.

·        But Ryan topped himself when he tried offering up a toast, using a pre-poured glass of Guinness that had gone flat. None of that luscious foam that hard-core Guinness drinkers would insist is the mark of a real drink.

Tunisia officials showed Angela Merkel of Germany more respect than U.S.

About the only way Trump could top that last gaffe would be, if the next time he visits Chicago, he were to stop off for a hot dog and insist on no tomatoes or pickle spears, but lots of ketchup.

This, admittedly, is all trivial. But these ceremonial rituals usually are the things that are so heavily researched in advance to ensure that nothing goes wrong. Ineptitude is putting things mildly.

PERSONALLY, I THINK the Mike Pence gaffe is the worst, because this IS the man who would become president, should the fantasies of many people that Trump become bored with the presidency and resign were to actually come true!

Although the fact that Trump followed up his Ireland gaffes of Thursday with a Germany snub on Friday is purely pathetic.

For Friday was the day that Chancellor Angela Markel was at the White House. She got a private meeting with Trump, followed up with a public appearance by the two during which Trump refused her offer of a handshake.

Reports also noted that Trump wouldn’t even look Markel in the eye during the time they were together before the cameras – the moment in which the world’s eye was literally on the two.

I find this sign outside an Austin, Texas restaurant to be amusing

IT WAS POINTED out how Trump had been critical of Germany during his campaigning last year, what with the way that nation has accepted refugees from Syria. A move Trump has called “a catastrophic mistake” mainly because it makes his attempts at creating xenophobic U.S. policies on travel and immigration look all the more ridiculous by comparison.

You’d think that even someone with a limited world view of Donald Trump (be honest, those hotels he builds overseas are largely for Americans who don’t want to have to interact with foreigners when they travel abroad) would be able to find aspects of Ireland and Germany he could identify with.

TRUMP: Gaffes galore!

It makes me dread what we’re likely to get when Trump is forced to acknowledge the existence of May 5 and the Mexican holiday of that date. Maybe he’ll head back to the Trump Tower in New York for one of the now-infamous “Taco Bowls” they serve in their restaurant.

Which makes me think that for those who wish to disdain Mexico, the locals there and in Mexican-oriented communities in this country probably showed more respect for the Irish this week than our nation did.

  -30-

We're all Irish on St. Patrick's Day, whether we want to be or not!

Saturday is the day we go overboard with the green, wearing shamrock symbols and even allowing our beer to be dyed to take on the tone of the Emerald Isle.

A past St. Patrick's Day, when Daley Plaza officials felt compelled to dye their water fountains green. Photograph by Gregory Tejeda.

It's St. Patrick's Day, and some of us will go about spewing stories about the Catholic saint driving the snakes out of Ireland. Most of us won't care about a "why" we're doing anything; we'll just want to eat, drink and be merry -- and perhaps get a peck of the lips  off some Irish lass who's in a particularly festive mood.

IN CHICAGO, SATURDAY is the day we'll get the official parade -- the one that ventures downtown along Columbus Drive (the Italian explorer gives up his ethnic character for the day to all the people who want to be faux Irish).

Personally, I don't plan to be anywhere near the parade -- and not because I'm experiencing some anti-Irish sentiment (if I did, there'd be no way I could bear daily life in Chicago). It's more because I just don't get into the idea of parades in general.

Although I will admit to twice having been at the St. Patrick's Day parade to see just how Chicago feels the need to celebrate those who come from places like County Mayo and don't feel compelled to make silly gags about sandwich condiments.

In both cases, I was out there as a reporter-type person. Back in 1993, I covered the parade back in the days when it was still held in downtown proper along Dearborn Street. In fact, that was the parade of which footage was included in the film version of "The Fugitive."

THE ONE IN which they felt compelled to use film snippets of then-Illinois Attorney General Roland Burris to show the idea of a political person bloating his ego -- which is one element of what the parades are all about.

I also remember the parade from back in 2002 -- which was the one in which then-President George W. Bush felt compelled to fly in from Washington, D.C., to participate in. To the point where I still remember the heavy security that Secret Service officials put parade spectators through (all those metal detectors and searches) to try to ensure that there wouldn't be a lone gunman-type amidst the green-clad spectators who would suddenly jump out and take a shot at the President of the United States.

Which, if you think about it, would truly be pathetic -- a leprechaun-clad assassin or some fool covered in "Kiss Me, I'm Irish" buttons suddenly wielding a pistol. Personally, I'd like to think that if such a situation had occurred, all the parade spectators in the area would have reverted to a drunken mob and would have jumped the attacker and beaten him silly.

Only place takes pride in its namesake river being green

That would have been a truly unique story -- instead of the one I actually wrote for my then-employer United Press International.

IN THAT STORY, Bush ultimately got into a car and drove off with then-Mayor Richard M. Daley to Gibson's steakhouse -- where they ate a lunch that was far beyond my income level to afford (even though I still remember my editor thinking it inappropriate that I tried pointing out that fact in my copy).

Enough of reminiscing, though. The biggest-name pol we're likely to see on Saturday will be Gov. Bruce Rauner, who likely will figure out pretty quickly that not everybody falls for his "Blame Madigan" rhetoric with regards to state government problems.

The real trick is to think of why we feel compelled to celebrate this particular Irish occasion, and not only in Chicago. I'm aware that Boston and New York also will feel the need to celebrate -- and may even have delusions of grandeur into thinking they "do" the holiday greater than we do in Chicago.

Although considering that we in Chicago do more than just the official parade (which will be from Noon to 2 p.m. and will be broadcast live on WLS-TV, for those of you too lazy to make the trip downtown to see Irish step-dancers galore or that of yet another young lass from Beverly or Bridgeport wearing the sash of the St. Patrick's Day Parade queen, I'd argue we can't be topped.

WE'LL HAVE THE South Side Irish Parade along Western Avenue through the Beverly neighborhood, or countless other celebrations that will take place in neighborhoods across the city and suburbs. I'm sure some will argue there are Pulaski Day parades to give Polish ethnics something to celebrate, and the assortment of Cinco de Mayo events for Mexican-Americans -- although I'd argue the latter have evolved into something so garish that it will rival all the St. Patrick's Day green for the Irish.

Parade became a plot element in film

Perhaps it is all good if it goes so far as to remind those of us in Chicago that we are an ethnic mixture. Which is something I have always felt added to what makes Chicago a special place.

In far too many places, people bellow out they are "American" without having any sense of where they're from or what they really are.

It almost makes all the green nonsense we're going to endure on Saturday just a bit more bearable.

  -30-

EXTRA: Cupid’s coming!

I have to confess. I found a place that had already taken down its Christmas decorations.

And promptly replaced them with all kinds of hearts and Cupids getting ready to shoot us with feelings of love and joy.

WE’RE JUST ABOUT one month from Valentine’s Day, and that is the theme for a White Castle franchise that I set foot in, seeing all the red and pink hanging from the ceiling to put me in the mood for romance, I suppose.

Personally, that much use of paper makes me wonder how long it will take to deteriorate in a landfill someday.

But the fact that it was Cupid and not Santa Claus looking down on me did give me a feeling of joy for a few seconds that wasn’t connected to the taste of one of those famed White Castle burgers.

Besides, even I’m not so much of a grouch to want to take off on Valentine’s Day, which will come and go in due course so we can pull out all the green and pretend we’re all Irish come March and St. Patrick’s Day.

  -30-

Day the river turns greener than usual

The holiday proper may be Monday, but Saturday's the day that the explorer who allegedly "discovered" America becomes Christopher O'Columbus for a day.

On Friday, it was the fountain outside Daley Center that was dyed green. On Saturday, it will be entirety of the Chicago River. Come Sunday, it will be the garbage from the parade that has a green residue. Photograph by Gregory Tejeda

It's the St. Patrick's Day parade, which in Chicago used to be an overbloated, pompous display of political might from the politicos of Irish ethnic origins.

IT'S NOT WHAT it used to be, though. I recall the old days of parades down Dearborn Street (and perhaps we ought to be fortunate that one of them wound up being integrated into the 1994 film "The Fugitive" so we can get a glimpse of what they used to be.

Now, those parades travel down about a four-block stretch of Columbus Drive. Which allows for the city skyline to be in the background. But which also gives them a generic parade feel.

Who can tell the difference between the Irish parade or the Mexican Independence Day event or any other group that has their annual parade along the same strip?

Gov. Pat Quinn will be on hand for the Saturday parade. But what will it say when an authentic Irish-American pol will likely be overshadowed by a Jewish guy?

RAHM EMANUEL IS, after all, Da Mayor. Quinn is just a political schnook who has to go to Springfield to be considered important (and even there doesn't get a whole lot of respect).

If anything, it is the events such as the South Side Irish parade out in the Beverly neighborhood that takes on more character, or the events that will be held in various suburban communities.

One of those in Elmhurst took place a week ago, and it resulted in a man having spent the past week in the DuPage County Jail, where charges are pending against him for comments he posted on a website hinting he might set off explosives during the event.

Definitely not someone in the holiday spirit.

PERSONALLY, I DON'T get all that excited about St. Patrick's Day. Although it is encouraging to see that Cinco de Mayo celebrations in Chicago are not the only ethnic-inspired events that result in way too much alcoholic consumption. (Just for what it's worth, the Census Bureau says 34.1 million U.S. residents claim Irish ethnic background, compared to 53.03 million who are Latino).

But it does say something about the ethnic character of Chicago that the people still try to do something to maintain an awareness of who they are and where they came from.

Which is something I find dismaying about visiting other places, where the white people have become so generic that they don't have a clue what they are (and anybody who tries to retort "They're American!" is missing the point of what our nation truly is).

I also find it amusing to see the annual tradition in Chicago that will be carried out this morning -- where the Chicago River is dyed green.

A NICE, BRIGHT shade of kelly green that looks like something the Lucky Charms leprechaun would wear before you took a bite of that overly-sugary mass that no one above the age of six ought to eat.

Which is different from the dull shade of greyish-green tha the Chicago River has become every other day of the year -- on account of the century's worth of pollution that has accumulated ever since the river flow's direction was altered to keep pollution out of Lake Michigan.

That makes me wonder about all those people who claim that the alteration is to blame for the possibility of Asian Carp getting into Lake Michigan. They'd have the engineering miracle undone.

Which could mean the residue of St. Patrick's Day could wind up in the lake. How many decades worth would it take before the lake turned green -- and we'd have to hear a batch of political dweebs from Michigan and Wisconsin complain about that!

SO FOR THOSE of you who feel compelled to show up at the Columbus Drive parade, here's hoping you enjoy yourself. Although I couldn't help but notice that the commuter trains I rode on Friday made a point of of mentioning that no alcohol would be permitted this weekend.

Although from my past years' experiences, I'm sure there will be those who get themselves "loaded" before catching a train, while also finding a way to smuggle a few bottles on themselves.

Is that the "Chicago Way" when it comes to parades?

-30-

5 days of being Irish? Only in Chicago

Perhaps it’s the timing of the holiday festivities this year, but I feel like we Chicagoans are in the midst of a five-day holiday weekend running through Tuesday.

That day is the actual calendar date of St. Patrick’s Day, which may have some significant cultural history to it but has become little more than an Irish ethnic pride day – one in which everybody likes to claim they have a wee bit o’ Ireland in their blood.

BUT BECAUSE IT is easier for the city to have official festivities on the weekend, we’re getting the actual St. Patrick’s Day parade on Saturday.

And in the Beverly neighborhood on Sunday, we’ll get the South Side Irish version of a parade.

So people literally could begin their Irish-inspired celebrating Friday night after work, carry it into the official downtown parade today, then spill over into a drive to the South Side for a third day of festivities. That river looks green to me, and it wasn't even St. Patrick's Day. Photograph provided by State of Illinois.

But those people who are determined to carry out their celebrations as much as possible, they will also insist on partying on the holiday proper on Tuesday. And why let a holiday-less day on Monday go by without some intoxicating behavior.

THE THOUGHT OF such a schedule strikes me as mind numbing, primarily because I’m not 19 anymore. I don’t think I’m physically up to such consumption of Guinness or any brand of beer with a green food coloring added for the holiday.

So maybe I’ll be the guy with a look of disgust on my face as I watch people around me this weekend, while going out of my way to wear nothing that resembles the color green. Then again, I’ll also be the one on May 5 having fits that the historic holiday of Cinco de Mayo has turned into little more than a Mexican version of St. Patrick’s Day.

But many of my Chicago colleagues will want to be in on the fun. In fact, some suburbs already have had holiday parades – giving people a chance to “rehearse,” so to speak, their Irish-inspired consumption of intoxicating beverages.

There will be the crowds that work their way downtown Saturday for the parade down Columbus Drive, which I still think is a letdown compared to the old days when the parade literally cut through the Loop.

CHECK OUT A copy of the Harrison Ford film “The Fugitive,” which included scenes that were filmed during the real Chicago St. Patrick’s Day parade of 1993 – and even includes a cameo of our now-U.S. senator, Roland Burris.

We’ll get to hear the Shannon Rovers play once again on Saturday, before they take off for the District of Columbia to perform in festivities to be held Tuesday at the White House. Those are just more of the benefits Chicago will continue to reap from having President Barack O’Bama (groan!) in office.

The holiday is even the inspiration for what may very well be one of McDonald’s most overrated concoctions of all time – the Shamrock Shake. I have never tasted anything even remotely mint-y, or even remotely delicious, about it.

Yet there are people I have met who swear they must have one of those mid-March McDonald’s milkshakes as part of their holiday tradition. Then again, these are the same people who think the McRib sandwich is some sort of delicacy, rather than just ground meat made from the disgusting parts of the pig.

BUT THEN, THERE’S the Second City tradition that I always find to be the most ridiculous aspect of a Chicago-style St. Patrick’s Day – the idea that the city dyes the river green.

After having an orange powder dumped into the water, the river takes on a kelly-green tone for a couple of hours, before reverting back to its natural dirt green tone – created by decades of pollution that once literally had the Chicago River classified as “toxic.”

Only out-of-towners would think having a green river is cute. The rest of us realize how disgusting the concept is.

That is why I got my holiday chuckle from a commentary recently published by www.australia.to. One of that Australia-based news-oriented website’s columnists speculates that the green dye is really nothing more than toxic waste that has accumulated throughout the past year.

ASIDE FROM DISPOSING of such waste without having to deal with the Environmental Protection Agency, “it would explain the mysterious appearance of the Zebra mussels in the Illinois River – which are clearly mutated quahogs.”

So by that theory, the holiday meant to celebrate the saint who eradicated Ireland of snakes is also responsible for the rise of Zebra mussels in Chicago.

Does this mean that if someone ever figures out a way of eliminating the mussels in the Chicago area, people throughout Dublin will get intoxicated in his honor? It seems only fitting.

-30-

EDITOR’S NOTES: What does the rest of the world (or at least a few Internet geeks in Australia) think of us Chicagoans as we’re (http://www.australia.to/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=7013:st-patricks-day-now-100-snake-free&catid=108:dan-h-woods&Itemid=122) inclined to behave this weekend?

It’s too bad John F. Kennedy never got to hear the Shannon Rovers play (http://blogs.suntimes.com/sweet/2009/03/chicagos_shannon_rovers_to_pla.html) on his behalf.

A place for those of you with Internet access, too much time on your hands and deadened tastebuds (http://shamrockshake.com/) to go to find a Shamrock Shake.

"The Fugitive" preserves memories of real Chicago St. Patrick's Day festivities

When it was released in 1993, “The Fugitive” received fairly positive reviews for the way in which the film resurrected the imagery of a hit 1960s television program while not being completely tied to its memory.

The film starring Harrison Ford inspired a sequel based on the activities of minor characters – the U.S. marshal’s agents who “heroically” stand up to an attempt by corrupt Chicago cops to cover up a crime by one of their own (only a Dirksen Federal Building geek could dream up that scenario).

BUT TO ME, the memorable part of “The Fugitive” was the way in which it showed off Chicago. Despite its oversimplification of the way the legal system works in criminal cases, it showed off elements of life in Chicago and its seedy underbelly.

And it also showed off a ritual that has become a part of the Chicago cultural landscape – the St. Patrick’s Day parade.

According to the storyline, the “Richard Kimble” character (played by Ford) is trying to elude federal agents after he escapes from a jail at City Hall. He flees and happens to wander into the parade, which is taking place at that very moment.

A couple of scenes of Ford milling through the crowd were shot specifically for the film. But the bulk of the parade scenery used in the film is a real version of the parade – specifically the one that marked the 1993 version of the St. Patrick’s Day holiday.

WHEN THEY WANTED to show off Irish dancing girls in ethnic costume doing their slip jig dance, we got to see the real girls dancing down Dearborn Street.

When we needed to see parade floats, we got to see the real thing. Ditto for a sea of people dressed in Kelly green articles of clothing and girls with shamrocks tattooed on their cheeks, and guys sloshed from drinking too much green-dyed beer.

When the film wanted to show a political person using the parade to attract attention for themselves, they showed a real Chicago politico walking down Dearborn and waving his hands to the crowd with a dorky smile on his face.

That is how then-Illinois Attorney General Roland Burris got his three seconds of cinematic fame. That’s not an actor, Roland was the real thing (which has since inspired him to joke that he should use his royalty payments for his cameo appearance in the film to finance his future political campaigns – the punch line of that joke being that his cameo was an unpaid appearance that he had no clue would happen until he saw himself on the screen while watching the film in the theater.)

AND WHEN THE film needed to give us the appearance of a mayor being hounded by reporter-types, trying to ask him questions while he’s marching down the street, they included a shot of Richard M. Daley surrounded by the City Hall press corps.

I actually covered that particular parade for United Press International (no, I don’t turn up on camera) and was vaguely aware that some sort of film was being shot. But no one had any clue just how prominent the imagery would be in “The Fugitive.”

What makes this cinematic moment so special is that it preserves (in a sense) the way the parade used to be – back in the days when parades were literally held in the heart of downtown Chicago.

Since then, Chicago has shifted its parades from Dearborn Street cutting down a canyon of skyscrapers and other century-old office buildings to the generic confines of Columbus Drive.

ADMITTEDLY, THE CURRENT location of the parades (which was used by the city again on Saturday to celebrate the image of St. Patrick) provides a space that can more easily be isolated from traffic than Dearborn Street.

It also is on the edge of Grant Park, which means that there is more open space, thereby making it more comfortable for people who come from all around the Chicago area to see the parade that is supposed to be the chance for Irish Chicago to show off its numbers, but often turns into a multi-ethnic drink-fest.

But to me, the St. Patrick’s Parade (and all the other citywide parades held on Columbus Drive) lost something when they were taken off Dearborn Street.

Watching the parade go south on Dearborn through the heart of the business district (literally inside “the Loop”) gave the event a feel for being in the strong part of Chicago. One could see the mightiness of the city, could almost feel its strength just by watching the event. One could almost see just what Carl Sandburg was talking about when he labeled Chicago the “City of Broad Shoulders.”

WATCHING A DVD of “The Fugitive” these days and seeing the parade scenes makes the powerful impact of Chicago just jump off the screen.

Now, the current event feels like it’s being held in the park, with trees and nature around it. If one looks off in a certain direction, they can see the downtown Chicago skyline looming over.

But if they look in any other direction, Chicago almost disappears. It’s almost like the parade could be held anywhere.

That was the feeling I got the one other time I covered a Chicago-style St. Patrick’s Day parade. The year was 2003, and the event consisted of a four-block walk along Columbus Drive.

THERE WERE SOME groups that were long finished with their portion of the walk, packed up and gone home by the time other groups at the end of the line were just beginning their part of the parade.

I even recall President Bush, whose participation was the highlight of that year’s event, only marched the first half of the parade, before getting into the heavily-armored limousine and driving off with Mayor Daley for lunch at an overpriced Rush Street restaurant.

My point is that the modern event has become a made-for-television production (literally, it was broadcast live on super station WGN-TV). It has lost much of its feel for the city, which is what made the event so special to begin with – and what made it worthy of comparison to the St. Patty parades in New York and Boston, the two other big festivals that give the Irish in this country a chance to flex their Irish muscle.

FOR A TRUE feeling of what the character of Chicago is about, one has to pay attention to the South Side Irish Parade along Western Avenue (which was held a couple of weeks ago, due to the fact that Easter Sunday is approaching and parade officials did not want their Irish event coinciding so closely with one of the holiest of all Christian holidays), or even some of the parades held for the holiday in surrounding suburbs.

So even though this year’s parades are over, I’m sure the bars – both real Irish and pseudo-Irish (Bennigan’s anybody?) – will be overflowing with people enjoying the drink specials and creating memories for future generations.

They’d be better off celebrating St. Patrick’s Day by getting a copy of “The Fugitive” for a holiday viewing, instead of being the star of a film made by someone with a video camera built into their cell phone that shows them staggering around intoxicated while wearing too much green.

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