The Irish are Bloody Everywhere

This morning I woke to what sounded like 100 of Santa’s elves hammering at 100 wooden trucks. As it turned out, it was 15-odd girls clad in remarkable costumes Irish dancing (arms at your sides!) on the back of a flatbed truck below my apartment building. It was a block away, and I live on the 25th floor, so it was quite a racket.

This week is Celtic Fest, an annual event designed to draw people down to Granville Street and encourage them to part with their money. They close off a block and Irish-themed vendors (soaps, sweaters, Irish wolfhound breeders, you name it) sell stuff from stalls. There’s a couple of stages for music, and a parade (hence the Irish dancing girls).

We stopped and poked around a bit on our way to the extraordinarily-awful (and utterly rife with product placement) Be Cool. At first I was disappointed that I forgot to bring my camera. Then I recognized that Flickr’s increasing influence means that there will no doubt be plenty of public photo documentation of the event. Sure enough, here’s a slideshow of 67 photos.

I continue to be amazed at how the Irish manage to export their culture to all corners of the globe. If I didn’t know the nation better, I’d think there was some vast marketing conspiracy at work. Instead, I think it’s just their friendliness, warmth and tasty, tasty beer.

UPDATE: Coincidentally, Richard has turned up a similar, but not exactly the same, set of photos.