Athens shows Irish spirit on Green Beer Day, St. Patrick's Day

Athens was anything but dull all this weekend. Besides the two fests, St. Patrick’s Day fell on Sunday this year. Usually a big day in this college town, the bars on Court Street experienced a smaller turn out from the normally packed drinking holiday.A few bars began the Irish festivities on Wednesday of last week with Green Beer Wednesday. A tradition of several years, the bars served green beer to patrons. Mallory Fetchu, a bartender at the Pub on Court Street, said the tradition brought a “huge crowd.”“Everyone was in a really good mood, especially for a weekday,” Fetchu said. “It was nice to see everyone out on Wednesday.”Lucky’s Sports Tavern combined their normal “Liquor Pitchers” special with a green pitcher, a specialty drink named after the Leprechaun, as well as providing green beer. Other participating bars included Pawpurr’s Bar and the Pigskin Bar and Grille.Several bars followed their annual tradition and made the Irish day a day for everyone. Jackie O’s Pub and Brewery created a Dublinesque atmosphere, hosting two Celtic performing groups and serving a special Irish menu.“The turn out was pretty good, given that St. Patrick’s was on a Sunday this year,” Pete Holey, a manager at Jackie O’s, said. “We had a cover charge of five dollars, for the live music, but there were more people there than on normal Sundays.”Holey said that the bar abstained from serving green beer on either Wednesday or Sunday, saying that Jackie O’s owner is an artisan brew master, and he would not taint his beer with green food coloring.“Besides,” Holey said, “we serve mostly brown beer, so the food coloring would not have done much anyway. We were happy to serve as much beer as [the people] ordered, so long as it was not green.”The fests definitely had an effect on patron attendance in the bars on Sunday. Milliron and Mill fests fell on Friday and Saturday, respectively. Lucky’s bartender Mike Haney said it was difficult to plan for the holiday because of the fests.“We had a special on green beer for Wednesday, but it was tough to decide how much [beer] we would need, especially after Mill fest,” Haney said.The crowds began to show up during Happy Hour at Lucky’s, but other bars noticed that patrons were sluggish, especially for St. Patrick’s day.“We were slammed on Green Beer Wednesday, but it took everyone a while to roll up out of bed,” Eric Turner, Manager at the Pigskin, said. “It was most likely because St. Patrick’s day fell on Sunday, and people are normally recuperating from Saturday night, so they take Sunday slow to get ready for the week and do homework.”Pawpurr’s experienced a similar sluggish reaction.“It was not all that crowded, and any activity seemed to die off at around 1 o’clock,” Laura Baker, Pawpurr’s bartender, said. “Coming out for the holiday is just hard to do after a fest, and I definitely didn’t see as many people as I expected.”