St. Patrick’s Day fell on a Thursday this year—March 17th—but in Ann Arbor, on the campus of the University of Michigan, the festivities don’t really start until the following Saturday. It’s a day that U of M freshmen look forward to each year; a day they can wander from folding table to folding table pounding Solo cups filled with green beer. It’s a day that one block of Ann Arbor—formed by the intersection of Hill and S. State streets, the area where the majority of U of M’s fraternities are housed—becomes one big, drunken party.
And it’s a day that looks a little different for many local businesses. Phil Clark, the owner of Ray’s Red Hots, an Ann Arbor hot dog joint, said, “St. Fratrick’s Day beats St. Patrick’s Day by a little bit.” And Clark and his friend, and sometime employee, Charlie Jackson, spent March 19th capitalizing on the popularity of St. Fratty’s. Each year they set up a hot dog stand right in the middle of the action—in front of the Kappa Sigma frat house. Clark said that during St Fratty’s, Ray’s Red Hots makes a special effort “not to discriminate against intoxicated clientele.”
That’s a smart business choice because, given their location, Clark and Jackson would be hard pressed to find any other kind of clientele. About 30 feet from where they have set up shop, an intoxicated college student climbs on top of a car parked on the grass, sledgehammer in hand, and brings a few punishing blows down on the hood. This isn’t an act of vandalism. “CANCER SUCKS” is scrawled across the street-facing doors of the car, and “$60” is sprayed on the one remaining window. The frat guys operating the car-smash inform me that it costs $3 for one hit and $5 for two. As the window suggests, glass costs extra.
The money that Kappa Sigma is making through this unorthodox fundraiser all goes to benefit M Relay, the University chapter of Relay for Life. Kappa Sigma became interested in doing philanthropic work like this when one of their own was diagnosed with cancer. Kappa Sigma, intelligently, made the car-smash open to the public. The party raging in the house behind is not.
The frat’s have, by and large, moved in this direction in the past couple years, because as a college girl handing out water bottles on the lawn in front of a party explained, “Most of the people that were causing trouble and getting hurt at the parties, weren’t members of the frats.” A few guys try to push their way in to a crowded party across the street from Kappa Sigma. A beady-eyed college guy standing on a milk carton sees them, and locks eyes with one of them: “Are you in the frat?” he asks.
“No,” the guy shakes his head.
“Then you’re not gonna get in.”
The two guys accept their fate, and move back out to the street.
This is the norm now, and one reason, among others, that seniors Matt and John, who live with a few other guys in a house a couple blocks away from the action, are skipping St Fratty’sthis year. John said that now they still celebrate St Fratty’s, but with their close friends, at a bar downtown. “We still get hammered,” he laughs, “the venue’s just changed.”
Matt adds, “I don’t want to have to schmooze a frat douche just to go hang out with a bunch of drunk freshmen.”
Matt and John look considerably older than the freshman down on Hill and South State; like grown men. Annie, a mail carrier, when asked her thoughts on the St. Fratty’s Day craziness commented on the youth of the party-goers: “It’s a bunch of drunk children.” When I caught up with her she was only halfway through her route—which was taking hours longer than usual—and she had already seen a bunch of teenagers bouncing on a jacked-up truck, and a guy peeing on the side of a building.
“It makes me wanna go home and beat my kids.”
She added that she thought Donald Trump was the “third antichrist” before we parted ways. Annie was joking about her kids; she wasn't joking about Trump. Both remarks bring home an important St Patty's Day lesson: Make Good Choices.
