I’m joking, I'm joking. I’m joking! The St. Patrick’s Day festival in Five Points is one of the major annual local festivals in the city, and considering how often young artists have an avid bone to pick with Columbia’s (small) size and (stunted/struggling) arts culture, you would think the festival might be more wholly embraced as a cornerstone of Columbia’s growth, bringing music and middlingly famous acts into blaring focus.
But the festival is not wholesale celebrated among the adults and the artists and the adult artists of the city. In a group text I’m in with some community members, it was asked if anything was going on that weekend, the weekend of March 16. All that was said by anybody about the festival was ‘St. Pat's on Saturday — avoid downtown at all costs.’
I understand why the event gets the reputation it does. In a mid-sized college town, mainstream events are subject to backsliding into collegiate tendencies, tailgate tendencies — alcoholism and subsequent recklessness — in part due to the sheer volume of those who seem really interested in drinking lots of drinks in succession from as early in the morning to as late in the evening as possible.
I’m pretty determined to support this city’s efforts to enrich and/or entertain its residents, at least as long as life makes a good enough case for me to live here. So for those absent to the revelry, not to worry, I put on a green sweater and a tiny skirt and went soberly into the fray with a miniature notebook in my miniature clear bag. I fancied myself something of a journalist, reporting on the event, which gave my ego the right-of-way to feel holier-than the greater partygoers (I am Irish, I studied for a semester in Dublin, actual Ireland, for God's sake.) Of course I am no holier. Free Times didn’t give me a press pass or anything. I’m just not much of a drinker, and I’d vaguely promised to give up alcohol in entirety for Lent, so I was aware of the ways I’d be committing to a different kind of experience. I wore sturdy boots and wondered blithely about the staying power of my Lenten promise.
11:00 a.m.
The first thing written in the notebook is ‘INSISTENT JAZZ.’ It’s true that upon entering one is beleaguered with sound. A man to the left of me blew on a plastic noisemaker while looking down at his phone. Another man from the side of the walk asked at us, “DO YOU WANT TO DRINK SOMETHING?” Politely, no. A speaker mounted to the stall selling turkey legs broadcast Nikki Minaj’s "Starships." I didn’t learn the name of the first band I saw on the mainstage but they were a group of totally stoked White people in jumpsuits, one of them impossibly glad to be playing a fiddle. The crowd was truly into it.
I soon found the halfpipe. This was an instillation made possible by local skate shop BlueTile, a halfpipe erected in a dry cleaner’s parking lot. There was a bracketed competition in play; how long each of the skaters could stay volleying on it without stopping. Each time a skater did something impressive at each end, the commentator said some skate jargon. A whole page in my notebook is just these words, a list of miscellaneous numbers and names, as if taking down the language of a foreign culture:
“270 heel. Heelblock. Crazy heelblock. Girl power for sure. Frontside splash. Love it! Love it! Hanging onto that front 50/50. Southflip. Southflip, very nice. You’d think this guy skates for a living but he does tilework in Atlanta.” They were piping in Celtic folk music.
Charlotte Rice of Som’bout and Sunhouse performs during the Stagbriar concert on Friday, Sept. 29, 2023 at New Brookland Tavern. (Photos by Eden Prime/Special to the Post & Courier)
I made it to New Brookland Tavern, which had a full-day bill of bands playing inside and DJs spinning in the side-alley. I caught Columbia band Som’ Bout, fronted by local musician and songwriter Charlotte Rice: a sharp, evocative demonstrator of what young local artists are capable of and where young local art may be headed. Talented local musicians and DJs floated New Brookland all day.
5:00 p.m.
I needed a change of pace and visited a friend of mine serving non-alcoholic drinks at ColaLove’s pop-up bar. This was a sweet little tent set out in the street in front of Publico, with shade and seating and a warm, kind, playful atmosphere. All clear here. I eventually felt a little restless, hugging a cup of the last ice of my rosemary mocktail, and I wondered about the state of the skaters.
This is where things started to devolve a bit for me. I tried to procure a boba tea at Pho Viet but when I got to the counter I learned they were serving a limited menu and was turned away. I wandered back to the halfpipe, my home, my sanctuary, where the game had become ‘highest air’ — a competition that had skaters taking new risks, fumbling and being slung back to the ground, a few skateboards zinging into the crowd. The commentator was not in his little tent off to the side anymore, but pacing behind the skaters at the top of the halfpipe. Two sorority girls asked for their photo taken in front of this display. I needed to make a new choice.
Wading through the street, I was in thrall to a labyrinth of strangers. Everybody was weaving, making bold weaving choices. I’m small and as a rule of thumb in these situations try to stick behind the larger people who forge paths. The sun was making its first scorching performance of the year. We stepped around matted mashes of French fries and cans and cracked plastic cups.
I did end up having a beer. Just one, when I was safe back in the NBT alley. My friends spun smart, smooth electronic music and I danced it out, danced it over. A man panned his phone slowly over the whole scene, thinking he was capturing a cool video of a cool party, I assume. I could not help but notice that his phone was on the photo setting, capturing nothing.
10:00 p.m.
We finally left Five Points. The roads slowly began to un-stick themselves and detangle back into individual throughways. As we were leaving, passing the Chik-Fil-A and Food Lion on our left, there was a gust of what sounded like gunshots from that strip of shops. Some people started running in earnest. The light at the next intersection was red, so we stopped, stalled near the still-inciting scene. A man on the sidewalk to the left of us sprinted up to a cop car. “They're shooting, somebody has a gun,” he was breathless. Sirens perked up from where they’d lain dormant around us all day. Blue light funneled into the Food Lion lot, and the light turned green.
