Like a horror movie they came, thousands of them. All ambling slowly forward in their drunkenness. With crossed eyes and bodies clad in green, they slurred their mating call: "FUCK YEAH BRO, KISS ME I'M IRISH!!!!"This was the moment St. Paddy's Day arrived in Waterloo, Ontario last week.Over 10,000 (some estimating as high as 15,000) people, mostly students from the city's two universities, crowded the Ontario town's Ezra Avenue—most of them just getting down and dirty piss-fucking-wasted. Videos of the event show a sea of people in throwing down in that overeager way you do in your late teens and early 20s.
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Look at this shit.Less than a decade ago, Waterloo's street party morphed from an unorganized coalition of house parties to this monstrosity. The event is now a put on by the City of Waterloo, Waterloo Fire Rescue, the University of Waterloo, and Wilfrid Laurier University.While, yes, for some people this scene would be as much of a nightmare as it is a cliche—but, fuck me if it isn't a cliche done right. Partiers were in trees, in tents, on cars, riding down hills in shopping carts. People standing in the roads were shoulder to shoulder, while DJs were tearing it up and some kids even pulled off some multi-storey beer bong shenanigans.The coppers, much like the revellers in the streets, were there in full force handing out tickets for infractions. Here are the charges (relating to booze) broken down:
- 118 people charged with having open liquor
- 13 charges of drinking in public
- 11 were intoxicated in a public place
- 9 were charged with underage drinking
- 14 people were charged with bodily emission in public place