Saint Patrick’s Day in Des Moines. A bloodshot sunrise and a head full of trepidation. The parade was already rolling by under the kind of sky that makes you question every choice that brought you here. 70 degrees in March—global warming be damned, the Irish have blessed this forsaken place with the gift of perfect drinking weather.
We were late, of course, but breakfast beers don’t drink themselves, and there was serious work to be done. The streets pulsed with green, a river of shamrocks and Guinness-stained grins. Some people had clearly been at it since the night before—true warriors of the holiday, wobbling forward like soldiers marching toward inevitable doom.
After the last float rattled past and the bagpipes faded into memory, we made our way to the Court Avenue District, where the real debauchery awaited. The block party outside @Annie’s Irish Pub was already a war zone of inebriation—sweaty bodies packed together, spilling whiskey and screaming half-remembered lyrics to songs they only pretend to know. And there, at the eye of this glorious hurricane, was The Hors D’oeuvres
A two-piece act—just piano and drums—but hell, they played like a full-blown symphony of chaos. One minute, they’re sliding through golden classics, tickling the ivories with the smoothness of a seasoned jazz act. The next, they’re belting out blues that could make a grown man weep into his Guinness. And then—out of nowhere—Rage Against the Machine. The crowd erupted, a mess of drunken limbs and righteous fury, screaming along like their green plastic beads actually meant something.
The beer flowed, the whiskey burned, and somewhere along the way, time stopped making sense. The leprechauns—those tiny, mythical gatekeepers of Irish tradition—must have been watching in horror as we desecrated their sacred day with reckless abandon. By the end of it all, even they would have turned their backs in shame, shaking their little green heads and whispering, Jesus Christ, lads… enough is enough.
But it wasn’t enough. It never is. And maybe that’s the whole point.
