Patrick's Day didn't happen two years ago after all, so people couldn't be more excited to jump into the holiday in '22.
Even the Carnegie Science Center is getting involved.
St. Paddy's Day celebration begins with a parade as per tradition on the Saturday before the official date of March 17.
The St. Patrick's Day parade, which dates back to 1869, has weathered wars, depressions, recessions, hurricanes and blizzards, though not a pandemic. In 2020, it was canceled and, in 2021, it was pushed to September, halfway to St. Patrick's Day.
Now that COVID has been eased, the parade is back in March, at 10 a.m. - rain, snow or shine - at Greyhound Bus Station (the intersection of Liberty Avenue and 11th Street) and on Grant Street and Allies Boulevard Proceed to , to the review stand on Stanwix Street, and distribution at Commonwealth Place.
A sea of Pittsburgers in the green will delight 22,000 participants in a constant flow of marching bands, dance circles, politicians, first responders, animal groups and ... a giant potato.
Note the rules: no alcohol on the parade route, no throwing of goods from marches or spectators, no adult themes or obscene language, and no political grandeur.
The 2022 Parade Grand Marshal is Peter Shovlin Sr., a native of Donegal, Ireland, born in 1931, who met his wife, Sheila Sweeney, at the Shamrock Irish Dance Hall in London. They married in 1956 and moved to the United States the following year, where they raised eight children.
A fiddler and carpenter, Shovlin provided music for many early dances at the Irish Center of Pittsburgh and arranged for an Irish Dancing Commission certified instructor to teach Irish step dancing at the center beginning in 1970. He served as the board chairman from 1980. until 1981.
Shovlin, a carpenter for the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners, local 432 eastern Atlantic states, made his first fiddle in 1991, before retiring in the mid-'90s, and has since made 24, giving them his children, Giving gifts to grandchildren. various donations.
He said in a statement, "When you support the Pittsburgh St. Patrick's Day Parade, you are really supporting St. Patrick. If he were alive today, and given a cellphone and a computer, would you? Can you imagine what they would do? When you see all that he has accomplished with a little shamrock?"