By Gabriela Knutson SYRACUSE, N.Y. (NCC News) — Some call the St. Patrick’s Day Parade the Grandest Day of the Year, but others call it the unofficial beginning of spring. Over the weekend, Downtown Syracuse held its 37th annual paraded honoring the Irish holiday, and some Central New Yorkers say the St. Patrick’s Day Parade symbolizes a marker into beautiful summer weather and festival season in Syracuse.
“It kind of sets of the spring season, ’cause you know nice weather’s coming and getting ready for the summer and everything after that and all the festivals,” says Shane Foster. “It’s a good festival to start off the year with.”
Dan Queri is a partner in downtown’s AMOS building and has been going to the spring and summer festivals for 30 years. He says he always gets excited for the summer season at this time of the year.
“As someone who owns businesses downtown and resides in Syracuse, we kinda look at the tree lighting and the skating as the beginning of the year, and then St. Patricks Day is that first festival to kick us off for all the festivals that we’ll host for 2019,” says Queri.
To others, St. Patrick’s Day marks the start of spring cleaning in the downtown area. Alice Maggiore, the Director of Communications of the Downtown Committee of Syracuse, says the St. Patrick’s Day Parade is not as messy as one would imagine. She says all of the participating restaurants do their part to make the areas and streets surrounding them as clean as possible quickly after the day is over.
A few weeks after St. Patrick’s Day however, when the snow melts and the ice skating rink on Clinton Square gets taken down, the Downtown Committee will have their own official spring cleaning day.
“We celebrate spring next week and with spring we comes spring cleaning. The Downtown Committee we always plan a big Earth Day cleanup,” says Maggiore. “When the snow melts all this litter ends up underneath the snow and so it’s really great for us to ask the community to come help us because it gives them buy in as well.”
Syracuse residents are encouraged to sign up to volunteer for the event on April 27th, and will receive a free lunch and a free Earth Day t-shirt.
