{"id":1408,"date":"2015-03-18T13:22:11","date_gmt":"2015-03-18T17:22:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thesauerbrunreport.com\/?p=1408"},"modified":"2015-03-18T13:22:11","modified_gmt":"2015-03-18T17:22:11","slug":"1408","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesauerbrunreport.com\/?p=1408","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Timothy<\/a><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve always enjoyed attending parades. I like the music-on-the-streets component. And here in New York City, I\u2019m interested in the political tension and controversy that usually accompanies a lot of the marches.<\/p>\n

The St. Patrick\u2019s Day parade is this city\u2019s granddaddy. It\u2019s big and colorful and runs much of the day. It always falls on the actual holiday unless it\u2019s a Sunday in which case it\u2019s moved to Saturday.<\/p>\n

In recent years, the West Indian-American parade on Labor Day in Brooklyn has drawn big, fun crowds and the National Puerto Rican Day parade in June is popular. But the St. Patty\u2019s Day parade really hits my sweet spot best because of all the bagpipers. The number of participating pipe bands is staggering. One right after another with one\u2019s sound blending into the next.<\/p>\n

I watched the 2015 St. Pat\u2019s parade from the park side of 77th and Fifth. It\u2019s a good spot near the end of the route away from the rowdiness and bars.<\/p>\n

Mayor Bill de Blasio refused to attend this parade. It\u2019s not gay enough for him. What I mean by that is that the parade\u2019s organizers have long excluded groups who aim to march under LGBT banners. This was supposed to be a breakthrough year but ended up being too small a step forward. The parade\u2019s token invite to just a single openly gay group (affiliated with broadcast partner NBC) ignored overtures from other prominent organizations who wanted to march.<\/p>\n

The conservative Catholics who control the parade have tripped over themselves a bit with declarations that groups are not allowed to march under a \u201cpolitical\u201d banner yet you saw invited marchers on Tuesday carrying a big sign that said \u201cENGLAND GET OUT OF IRELAND.\u201d The parade also forbids floats and vehicles yet the front end of the procession yesterday featured a fleet of Ford cars and trucks presumably because of that company\u2019s paid sponsorship arrangement.<\/p>\n

As I said here last year, it\u2019s a matter of when – not if – the LGBT groups who want to march get their invites to this parade. It\u2019s such a massive collection of people marching up Fifth Avenue in a city that embraces inclusion that change is inevitable. The stodgy Irishmen who don\u2019t want rainbows mixing in with their green will eventually be replaced by less stodgy Irishmen who see and learn what the new Pope and New York Archbishop Tim Cardinal Dolan (pictured above) are finally saying on the subject now that a clear majority of Americans are learning to accept, love and support the LGBT community.<\/p>\n

A brisk wind from the northwest blew Dolan\u2019s shawl into his face and forced him (the parade\u2019s grand marshal) to grab a hold of the hat on his head. Several members of the US Navy Marching Band watched their white sailor hats go flying as they passed by me.<\/p>\n

After seeing enough, I went down to O\u2019Hanlon\u2019s for a couple and arrived just in time for the start of Arsenal\/Monaco. You wouldn\u2019t even know it was St. Pat\u2019s day at the bar because the obsessive focus was on soccer. This must be a known Arsenal hangout because it was an intense crowd that shrieked on every sequence. Great atmosphere. Monaco was in defensive, run-out-the-clock mode from the start and it almost didn\u2019t work out for them. It\u2019s hard to believe Arsenal gave up three goals at home based on the way these two teams looked yesterday. The other thing I thought about as I sat there in this really wonderful pub full of singing soccer fans was whether we\u2019ll ever see a MLS match generate that type of intense passion.<\/p>\n

As for March Madness, the Johnnies are in as a 9 but will play without O-Block-Pah (suspended two weeks for doob puffs). It\u2019s gonna be tough for St. John\u2019s to make much of a run without the Swatter. Jay Wright told Mike on Monday that Obekpa\u2019s absence really hurts St. John\u2019s. \u201cHe\u2019s the one guy you can\u2019t lose,\u201c said Wright. The Storm\u2019s opponent San Diego State makes the cross-country flight to Charlotte Wednesday which isn\u2019t easy but their game will tip off Friday night on San Diego time (940 PM in the east) which eases that disadvantage a bit. SDSU has size but doesn\u2019t shoot great so I think it\u2019s a winnable game for the Johnnies who would get Duke on Sunday if they can beat Fisher and the Aztecs. Watch for all five St. John\u2019s starters to play in excess of 35 minutes given the fact they now have no viable sixth man.<\/p>\n

The only other NYC team to get in was Manhattan. Their head coach Steve Masiello looks ridiculous now for popping off about his team\u2019s bracket placement. Masiello and the Jaspers lost a sixteen vs. sixteen game last night against sub-500 Hampton. Manhattan won the MAAC tourney coming off a mediocre regular season to get the automatic bid. But instead of fully embracing the Dance chance, Masiello complained about the selection committee\u2019s fun and kinda twisted placement of Masiello\u2019s team opposite Kentucky in the round of 64 game. This all came a year after a scandal in which Masiello was busted for inflating his Kentucky credentials and nearly got disgraced out of the sport. I personally enjoy the committee\u2019s effort to manipulate storylines instead of creating brackets purely on the math and science. If I was Masiello, I would have not made a peep about Kentucky until I beat Hampton. And then, I would have said Bring \u2019Em On.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve always enjoyed attending parades. I like the music-on-the-streets component. And here in New York City, I\u2019m interested in the political tension and controversy that usually accompanies a lot of the marches. The St. Patrick\u2019s Day parade is this city\u2019s … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s28tEv-1408","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesauerbrunreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1408"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesauerbrunreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesauerbrunreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesauerbrunreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesauerbrunreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1408"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thesauerbrunreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1408\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1409,"href":"https:\/\/thesauerbrunreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1408\/revisions\/1409"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesauerbrunreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesauerbrunreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesauerbrunreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}