Green Day

After mass on this day 136 years ago, so the story goes, native Irish priest James A. Dunn led parishioners from Eighth Street and Cherry into downtown. They had to wait nearly 80 years for public sentiment to catch up with their revelry, but in the decades since KC embraced St. Patrick's Day, it has become the city's largest single-day event. Starting at 11 this morning, this year's parade — which won't be downtown for the first time since the mid-1970s — heads south on Broadway from Linwood to 43rd Street, with an estimated 4,000 participants and 100,000 spectators expected on the 1.29-mile midtown route. Pull out the green T-shirts and get busy checking out these quintessential KC Irish activities. (For more ideas, see The Pitch's St. Patrick's Day Guide on page 28.)• Between 6:30 and 11 a.m., fill up on a traditional Irish breakfast at Browne's Irish Market & Deli (3300 Pennsylvania, 816-561-0030): rashers and bangers (bacon and sausage), eggs, potatoes, tomatoes, bread and beans. • Made by dropping a shot of Jameson and Bailey's into a half-pint of Guinness, Irish car bombs blow up real good at Kelly's Westport Inn (500 Westport Road, 816-561-5800). This building, erected in 1850, counts among its former enterprises a grocery store and a bar that featured live wrestling in the 1930s. Today, the corner Irish bar will open at 9 a.m. and will take $2 from everyone at the door to donate to the Welcome House, a halfway house for recovering alcoholics and drug addicts.• You can see local Irish rockers the Kelihans at four venues today. They're at the Riot Room (4048 Broadway, 816-442-8179) at 1 p.m., the Record Bar (1020 Westport Road, 816-753-5207) at 3 p.m., in Waldo in front of Lew's (7539 Wornall, 816-444-8080) at 5 p.m., and then (says the band's MySpace page) at O'Dowd's Little Dublin in Zona Rosa (8600 Northwest Prairie View Road, 816-268-6333) at 8 p.m.• Lew's management would like to remind you that the average local temperature for the past six years on St. Patrick's Day has been a cool 45.8 degrees — not warm enough for green tube tops. So the place keeps things under cover. Lew's sixth-annual Irish Hooley starts in the bar at 9 a.m., moves outside to a heated tent a couple of hours later and lasts until 3 a.m. Besides the Kelihans (at 5), entertainment includes the provisionally renamed Disc O'Dick & the Mirror Balls at 8. Tickets cost $10 at the door. • It'll already be noon in Dublin by the time McFadden's (1330 Grand, 816-471-1330) opens at 6 a.m. for Kegs & Eggs with the morning crew from KRBZ 96.5. Stick around for five hours of free, live music all day on the KC Live! stage with national acts Silversun Pickups, Dead Confederate and the Von Bondies along with local acts Kelly, Flannigan's Right Hook and Rattle & Hum.— Berry Anderson
Tue., March 17, 2009