Great job to keep St. Pat’s going in Slidell

When you talk about “overwhelming crowds,” you couldn’t find a better example than the 48th annual St. Patrick’s Day parade that rolled in and around the Olde Towne area on Sunday.
What is it about the St. Patrick’s Day parade that makes it so popular, not just here, but in other cities as well?
Whatever the spirit is that takes over the community each year on the second Sunday in March, it is a joyful one to be sure. Slidell’s annual parade blows away the crowds for even the most popular Mardi Gras parades, and the easiest way to make that comparison is by noting the challenge to find parking anywhere close to Olde Towne for this event. Cars were parking as far away as Old Spanish Trail and throughout the streets of Brugier almost to Gause Boulevard.
The Olde Towne Slidell Merchants Association is the organization that has kept the St. Patrick’s Day parade rolling each year, even as it has grown and grown to the point of difficulty in managing the huge crowds. Estimates of “over 10,000 people” don’t seem like enough when trying to count the numbers, but then there is actually no way to ever know how many people are really there.
What you can see is that the crowds go as deep on the sides of the parade route and floats as they can manage, and with this year’s total of almost 60 floats, parade entries, dancing groups and others that are in the parade, the burden on volunteers and Slidell Police to keep things under control does get difficult.
Even though barricades are set up around Olde Towne to keep cars and trucks out, it doesn’t take long for individuals to move them out of the way, determined to get a closer parking spot than normal. And then the problems begin.
The St. Patrick’s Day parade is one of the most enjoyable events of the year for our community, but it doesn’t happen each year without a lot of unnamed people doing a lot of work behind the scenes, and on parade day, to keep things under control.
And once again, Slidell Police said the crowds were mostly well behaved with only a handful of isolated incidents here or there, which is bound to happen when the green beer is flowing liberally from early in the morning until late in the evening.
The Olde Towne Merchants deserves a nice pat on the back for handling this event, which has grown to be perhaps the biggest public outing all year in Slidell.
It’s the reason we love our small community on the North Shore, which manages to maintain great family outings like this for Slidell, even with thousands beginning to come from surrounding areas.