Dear Editor:
I’ve just spent a very pleasant half hour on Fifth Ave. in New York enjoying the St. Patrick’s Day Parade. It was wonderful to watch the bands, surrounded by people of all ages cheering the marchers on.
Perhaps because I enjoyed it so much it made me serious all over again that the Hoboken parade has been shanghaied by drunks who come from out of town and take over our city. Last year I left town just before the parade began but made the mistake of coming home that night. On my brief walk on 10th St. from Hudson St. to Washington St. I saw two men urinating in the street and a young woman vomiting in someone’s yard. This year while I was walking to the Y at 7:45 a.m. I saw a young man in green regalia drinking a beer right out in the street.
Once again, I skipped the parade, only this time I stayed away until Sunday afternoon. The stoops were still littered with half full cups of beer when I got home but at least the town belonged to its residents again. If Hoboken has to have a day for the bars and liquor stores to make the big bucks, maybe we should have an official “Come to Hoboken, Get Drunk and Disorderly, Spill Out of the Bars and Into the Streets, Take Over the Town” day, but hold it some time other than the day of the St. Patrick’s Day Parade, so those of us who treasure it can have our parade back.
Virginia Parrott