Location

An inside source has told the Southwest Observer that the South Side Irish St. Patrick's Day Parade Committee plans to march - quietly and inconspicuously - from 103rd Street to 111th Street along Western Avenue at 10:30 a.m. Sunday.

The reason is simple: The committee will lose its parade permit unless it continues to step off from the original parade start point at the intersection of 103rd and Western. Although no one would confirm this on record, it's all but guaranteed that - because of this technicality - the parade will continue.

For the obvious reasons, the committee has kept it quiet, so as not to attract the thousands of drunks who ruined it in recent years for the rest of the neighborhood.

Still, those partaking in past parade-day imbibing before noon should look out for the small band of marchers who plan to make their way south along Western Avenue. I'm told that they plan to march on the east side, which has always been the dry side and makes sense so as not to attract attention of the potentially hundreds of pub crawlers who plan to continue the other parade-day tradition: drinking heavily.