Belated St. Patrick's Day post

Okay, so I should have posted this two weeks ago, but ... well... I didn't.

We had a good day listening to music around town, drinking some good beer (although not excessively this year) and eating way too much food. The picture above links to my Flickr set of a few photos I took. We started out at the Dog and Duck Pub, which puts up a big tent in their parking lot now and has live music going on most of the day. I've watched their St. Patty's day party grow over the years and I really like that big tent they have now, since some times the weather isn't very cooperative. I remember one year that was pretty cool and drizzly (authenic Irish weather, I guess) *before* they got the tent! While we were there we caught the Tea Merchants and Poor Man's Fortune, and both groups were excellent.

After Dog and Duck, we wandered down to 6th street to see the craziness that reigns on the 17th of March. For those of you not familiar with 6th street, it is the main bar and music street in downtown Austin. So, it's generally crazy anyway, then add South By Southwest, and then add St. Patrick's Day and well, you get the picture. We went to B.D. Riley's which is one of the newer pubs in town. We first went there last year or the year before (can't remember for sure) and really liked it. One nice thing is that they limit the number of people who can go in so sometimes you have to wait for a while for people to leave. But it works out well and it isn't quite as crazy-packed as other places. And you can actually get into the bathroom without waiting forever with your legs crossed or doing a funny dance. And a special added bonus is getting to drink your beer from a real pint, not a plastic cup!

Anyway, one of the reasons we went there was to listen to Gilmer & Moore, who were also excellent. That's one of the great things about Austin on St. Patrick's Day, you basically can't swing a lepruchan without hitting some good music.

After 6th street it was off for dinner and some Amy's Ice Cream, which I have to admit didn't sit so well on top of a fried lunch, a couple of beers, a glass of wine and an Italian dinner, but seemed like a good idea at the time.