Pork Chop : St. Paddy’s Parade Mascot May Be Sending Wrong Message so Next Year, Organizers Say, This Little Piggie Stays Home

For better or worse, Saturday’s 10th annual St. Patrick’s parade was the last year of the giant green pig.

“We’re finally going to shred it up,” said parade chairman and City Councilman Brian Brennan.

Although the inflatable swine has evolved into the unofficial mascot of the Main Street parade over the last decade, “The reality is, it’s a racial slur,” Brennan said.

Organizers would like the annual parade and festival in honor of St. Patrick’s Day--to be celebrated nationally on Tuesday--to aim for a loftier image, instead of being associated with a fat, garbage-eating farm animal.

Perhaps next year, the parade’s mascot will be the stocky Connemara pony, Brennan said. Connemara is a small Irish neighborhood near Galway, where Brennan grew up. It is known for its literary community, Brennan said.

The pig’s retirement promises to disappoint some tradition-minded parade-goers, who come annually to see the giant float.

“We always look forward to the green pig,” said Deborah Navaro of Thousand Oaks, who was at the procession with her husband, Jesse, and their children, Joseph, 10, Joshua, 8 and Joslyn, 7.

But Brennan hopes that St. Patty-lovers will understand the parade committee’s decision.

He dwelled instead on other attractions Saturday. For instance, he said, 16 members of Ventura’s Claddagh School of Irish Dancing recently won the national title for figure choreography and are now eligible to compete in a global dancing contest in Ireland on Easter Sunday.

Teams from Scotland, England, Chicago and New York are expected to attend the dancing competition. It is the first year a team from California will attend, said dancing school teacher Maire O’Connell.

Some of the proceeds from this weekend’s St. Patrick’s Day post-parade food and music festival will help the dance troupe--eight women and eight men in their late teens and early 20s--fly to Ennis, Ireland, for the event. The group is about $6,000 short of its $23,000 goal, Brennan said.

The St. Patrick’s Day festival continues today from noon to 4 p.m. at Mission Park across from the San Buenaventura Mission. Featured will be Celtic fiddlers and performances from some of the 200 members of the Irish dance school, which took first place in the commercial division of the parade contest Saturday. Admission is $1.

The troupe’s jigging throughout the day rallied the green-clothed crowd, inspiring many passersby to tap their feet to the sound of violins and bagpipes. Throughout the celebration, poised young dancers tapped, jumped and twirled to the tunes of traditional Irish step dances, the girls’ Shirley Temple-like ringlet curls bobbing in the wind.

Parade organizers estimated that the audience this year was slightly less than last year’s crowd of 10,000.

They said that Friday night’s rain may have thinned the crowd, but the sky was sunny all day Saturday, creating a perfect parade atmosphere in which horses clomped and marching bands stomped down seven blocks from the mission to Kalorama Street.

“We came to celebrate at the parade and eat corned beef and cabbage at The Elks,” said Phyllis Bailey of Ventura, who showed off the shiny green plastic hat she had bought earlier.

Her grandsons, Eric, 6, and Josh, 4, were happy to get a good perch on top of a sidewalk news rack to view the 76 groups marching in the parade.

Ventura County families of Irish descendants with last names like Cloyne and McLoughlin rode down the street on trailers decorated with hay and green balloons.

Oxnard and Santa Paula high schools, De Anza Middle School and the Boys & Girls Club of Ventura showed off their brass marching bands and baton twirlers.

And for the last time, the parade committee jetted by on a float bearing the pig, standing nearly as tall as the Bank of America building.

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Ventura County St. Patrick’s Day Parade Contest Winners

Pioneer families: First place, John and Anna Lyster Scarlett. Second place, Michael Hugh and Margaret Lynch Clark.

High school bands: First place, Buena High School. Second place, Oxnard High School. Third place, Santa Paula High School.

Junior bands: First place, De Anza Middle School. Second place, Boys & Girls Club of Ventura.

Adult bands: First place, Los Angeles and District Pipe Band. Second place, Santa Barbara Elks Drum & Bugle Corps.

Color guard: First place, Marine Corps League #597.

Commercial vehicles: First place, Santa Paula Union Oil Museum. Second place, Crown Dodge. Third place, Ventura County Public Health Department.

Antique vehicles: First place, Ventura Model A Club. Second place, Wolfsburg Finest. Third place, Tony’s Auto Body.

Individual: First place, Larry Matheny for County Assessor. Second place, Dan Goodwin for County Assessor. Third place, Ventura Elks BPOE Lodge No. 1430.

Junior clubs: First place, Boys & Girls Club of Ventura. Second place, Tres Condados Girl Scouts. Third place, Ventura County Junior Fair Board.

Adult clubs: First place, Therapy Dogs International. Second place, Veterans of Foreign Wars. Third place, Seph and Leash.

Commercial clubs: First place, Claddagh School of Irish Dancing. Second place, Gerry’s Busy Oak Cafe. Third place, Billy O’s.

Perpetual Arnold Hubbard in Memorial Trophy: Boys & Girls Club of Ventura.

Media: First place, The Octopus. Second place, The Ventura Reporter. Third place, The Breeze.