If your lineage is Irish, as mine is, or you simply pretend it to be so on this date every year simply so you have a basis for "acting Irish", and you spend this day drinking to excess and making a public spectacle of yourself, then I presume that for you today is not St. Patrick's Day. Instead, it is merely Tuesday. I would send you my condolences but for someone who views your interpretation of St. Patrick's Day through the same cynical prism as I view your interpretation of New Year's Eve, which is Amateur Hour, I have none to give.
I have tremendous empathy for those whose livelihood is dependent upon their ability to serve food and drink to paying customers, including the good people who own and operate O'Hara's on Cedar Street in Lower Manhattan.
O'Hara's is one of my favorite places on earth, not simply for its Ten House Burger and its perfect pours of Guinness, but because when New York City was on its knees in the weeks and months following September 11, 2001, O'Hara's was a port in the storm. The patches that adorn its walls were donated by first responders, men and women from all parts of the globe who spent the months following 09/11 working "the pile" at Ground Zero, who gathered at O'Hara's to eat and to drink and to try to make sense out of what the hell had happened and what the hell was happening, then and there.
Its neighborhood did not collapse in large part because it refused to allow it to do so. Covid-19 has brought hard times back to O'Hara's doorstep. May its neighbors step up to support it as it has stepped up to support them.
Happy St. Patrick's Day.
-AK
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