St. Patrick's Day in Chicago?

Hello resident Chicagoans - Got a trip planned for me & my crazy friends to Chicago for St. Patty's Day. It is truly our favorite holiday, we take the day off work every year to celebrate & party...but this is our first St. Patty's in Chicago.

Coming in from Detroit, we'll be in town from Sat., March 15 to Tues., March 18. We love small, old bars with good beer & fun people. We're very used to the cold weather and are staying downtown.

Any suggestions for places we should check out to party or sights to see during the day? Thanks for any input!

St. Patrick's Day in Chicago is like Mardi Gras in New Orleans, without the beads and the flashing. (dammit) But you've got two parades to hit, which are the downtown parade on Saturday and the South Side Irish Parade on Sunday the 16th. (make sure you get there early, parking is tough in both) You can see the river dyed green on the 15th and ask the question for the millionth time, "If they can paint the river green one day, why can't they paint it blue the other 364 days?"

As for places to go, Division Street will have several good bars, including Mother's and Butch McGuire's. The northwest side boasts The Celtic Crown, Abbey Pub, and Chief O'Neill's. The Irish American Heritage Center on the Northwest side has a celebration both on the 15th and the 17th (the 15th is the big one).

the neighbor between Belmont and Clark, lots of activities there, especially in the summer. i live there. there are some nice bars between Rosco and Clark, not far from Wrigley Field.

If you're looking for bars that celebrate St. Patrick's day, try anywhere in the city. They go NUTS over it here.

But as for the most popular and famous place, there's Kitty O'Shea's downtown (http://chicago.metromix.com/bars-and-clu... Fado on Grand Ave. is one of the more authentic looking pubs in the city (http://www.fadoirishpub.com/chicago/), although it is part of a national chain. Poag Mahones (a dirty phrase in Gallic I believe) is pretty popular too (http://www.poagmahones.com/poag/poagmaho... The Abbey Pub on the far north side (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Iri... is a popular place where you can have a traditional Irish pub experience, then slamdance to punk, rock or even hip hop bands later in the evening.


There are a bunch of other places, too many to name. But The Local Tourist, a great website, has a list of other non-pub related St. Patrick's day stuff, in case you're not 21 (http://www.thelocaltourist.com/holidays/...

I went on on St. Patty's Day Last year, for my birthday...
We went to Wrigleyville and it was off the chain!!!
Thats near Clark and Addison
Check out John Barleycorns!!!

Last year I went to check out the river being dyed green and then walked down to Grant Park for the parade. Both were pretty cool. And I got some great pics of the river.