Parade Day doesn’t need much extra juice, with more than 100,000 expected to visit Scranton Saturday. But the city’s largest bar, Tink’s, which closed in January, is reopening for Parade Day. Another large club, The Colosseum, is working in hopes of being open in time for the big day, and to the south, Wilkes-Barre will gear up for its parade on Sunday.
Oh, and Democratic Presidential candidate Sen. Hillary Clinton will just happen to be in Scranton Saturday to campaign.
“It’s a very lucrative day,” said Tink’s owner John Heil. “It’ll help carry some businesses for the next few months.”
Parade Day means more of everything: more revelers, more police and security — especially in the wake of Clinton’s announcement — and for bar and club owners, more booze, bartenders and bouncers.
“We just prepare for a lot and hope that it’s enough,” Heil said.
Tink’s, which usually has nine bartenders and a 7-man security crew during a normal weekend, will put 22 bartenders and 15 security guards to work Saturday. It will have about five times its normal supply of beer and liquor on hand.
Scranton Parade Day officially begins with Mass at St. Peter’s Cathedral at 10 a.m., and the Brian P. Kelly Memorial 5K Race starts at 11:30 a.m. The parade steps off at 11:45 a.m. on Wyoming Avenue near Mulberry Street, where it will make its way down to Lackawanna Avenue, where it turns left, heads up to Jefferson Avenue and cuts over to Spruce Street in front of the Radisson at Lackawanna Station hotel. The parade will move down Spruce, turning right onto North Washington Avenue, passing the reviewing stand in front of the Lackawanna County Courthouse.
Scranton hosts the fourth largest St. Patrick’s Day Parade in the United States, boasting 9,000 participants, including floats, bagpipe players, high school bands, minstrels and Irish groups. It has been an annual staple since 1862 and is organized by the St. Patrick’s Day Parade Association of Lackawanna County. According to the association, the parade is actually the second largest in the country as measured by participants per population of the city in which it’s held for cities with populations greater than 50,000; Savannah, Ga., is the largest, and New York is third.
Last year’s attendance was more than 100,000, with some estimates pegging the crowd as high as 120,000. Despite a frosty forecast, that number should be met or exceeded this year, especially with the planned visit of Clinton and Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell.
Sunday’s Wilkes-Barre parade begins at 2 p.m. at the intersection of West Ross and South Main streets. It will feature the return of the giant parade balloons, designed by Smith Special Productions/Balloonworks of Williamsport.
If you’re looking for an alternative to the bar scene, don’t worry. The Scranton Cultural Center will host its Post-St. Patrick’s Day Party, which in quirky Parade Day fashion, actually begins at 11 a.m., 45 minutes before the parade. The free, all-ages event will feature Causeway, billed as one of Philadelphia’s best Celtic bands, playing a mix of traditional and contemporary favorites. Also on hand will be many of the parade groups, like step dancers and drum and pipe corps, and food and refreshments will be sold.
In Wilkes-Barre, head to Wilkes-Barre Movies 14 at 4:30 p.m. Sunday for a free screening of “Waking Ned Devine.” The theatre will offer free admission with the donation of a non-perishable food item to benefit the St. Vincent de Paul Soup Kitchen. (Seats are available on a first-come, first-served basis, and tickets can be picked up on the day of the parade.)
Those frequenting the bars in downtown Scranton will be pleased to find Tink’s temporarily reopened after it closed its doors in January. The Linden Street mainstay will close again after Parade Day and undergo renovations before it opens again under new ownership.
A short walk away, Colosseum Nightclub & Lounge hopes to have the finishing touches on its new facility completed in time to open for Parade Day. The 6,000-square-foot club will be housed in the Hilton building on Adams Avenue.
In addition to the return of Tink’s and the possible debut of Colosseum, there’s another twist for Scranton’s Parade Day bar scene: Lackawanna County District Attorney Andy Jarbola asked bar owners to open their doors at 9 a.m. rather than the traditional 7 a.m. Most are complying.
“That’s a good thing,” said Heil of Tink’s, which won’t open “until” 9 a.m. “It’s a family day, and if you take your kids, you don’t want them to see people staggering around Courthouse Square.”
Meanwhile, Hardware Bar, which operates several successful Central Pennsylvania locations, is set to kick off its Wilkes-Barre spot Thursday, March 14 with an 8 p.m. invite-only Vanilla Ice show, and its doors will open to the public at 9 p.m., according to its Web site.
Whether Scranton, Wilkes-Barre — or both — is your choice for St. Patrick’s partying this year, you’ll likely not see the lengthy planning and setup or the post-celebration cleanup, which is “almost as bad as the preparation,” Heil said.
It’s a challenge for everyone involved, so much so that when asked if he’s able to enjoy Parade Day, Heil replied simply, saying “No,” laughing. But the events are worth the effort.
“It’s a big day for everybody; hotels, restaurants, the bars, all of the people,” he said. “It definitely benefits the community.”
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