Crews in Downtown Corpus Christi will work late into the night Friday to make sure the 8th Annual St. Patrick’s Day Festival is ready to open Saturday morning.
“We’ll get some bagpipers going right at 10:00 a.m. to get it kicked off,” festival co-organizer Stephen McMains said.
The event will feature live music until 1:00 a.m. Sunday music. There will also be more than 20 food trucks and food vendors and more than 30 art vendors. And of course there will be green beer, Irish whiskey, and all sorts of libations flowing.
“I’m excited,” veteran St. Patrick’s Festival goer Cassie Kirkpatrick said. “It’s going to be great. I’m Irish also, so that’s fun.”
Kirkpatrick is also a regular at Cassidy’s Irish Pub, the hub for the festival. Fellow regular, Mark Woerner, says the dynamic of the festival changes as the day goes by. He shoots to arrive by around 4:00 p.m. when the family activities wrap-up but leave by 7:00.
“I don’t have the stamina anymore to stay up until the wee hours of the night, and when it gets too crowded and too wild, that’s not really to my tastes,” Woerner said.
Corpus Christi Police have been planning for the festival for a long time. This year it coincides with Spring Break, but department leaders say they’ll still be able to keep everyone safe.
“it’s not uncommon for us to have multiple events throughout the city overlapping each other,” CCPD Deputy Chief Christopher White said. “We knew Spring Break was coming, so we had that plan way in advance. We have a traffic control plan for that plus a security plan for it on the beach. We did the same thing for the Downtown-area with St. Patrick’s Day.”
