‘We Don’t Have Green Beer in Here’

About 9 this morning, the taps at Ireland’s 32 will flip on and the first coffee-dark pint of Guinness will cascade out. On this St. Patrick’s Day, odds are good that it won’t pass the lips of a regular.

To the old-sod Irish patrons and bartenders at the San Fernando Valley’s oldest Irish pub, St. Paddy’s is the most amateurish of amateur days. More than New Year’s Eve and Halloween, it is the day on the drinking social calendar when the lightweights come out to party, the brawlers get rowdy and the regulars stay away.

“I never saw anything like it until I came here,” said Patrick Mulcahy, the Irish-born manager of Ireland’s 32. In his native County Clare, which he left in 1980, Mulcahy remembers, March 17 is a religious holiday of national significance. And a day for families, like the Fourth of July in America.

“It’s a solemn day as far as the Irish are concerned,” he said.

But as far as the Americans are concerned, “solemn” is about the last word to describe St. Patrick’s Day. Here, it can be a day for staggering in a loosely organized parade, stealing a pinch from a lass who forgot to wear green and promoting beer with cutouts of shamrocks.

“It’s not the Irish who give it a bad name. It’s the wannabes,” Mulcahy said.

Don’t get Mulcahy wrong; he is grateful for America’s annual tribute to the Irish. The 50% jump in business his bar will see today justifies the extra staff, security and hassle that he and the other bartenders and waitresses will put up with.

Mulcahy pities his regulars, though.

“A lot of good people come here all year and they get stuck in line [today],” he said. As a concession, Ireland 32’s held a pre-St. Patrick’s Day party last Sunday so its regulars could celebrate without the crowds.

The Van Nuys pub sported a heavy touch of green. Above the veneered bar hung the clover cutouts: a pint of Guinness glistening at the center of the three-leaf shamrock, suggesting that the Irish’s favorite foamy stout belongs among the Holy Trinity. There were warbling songs, dancing and a chafing dish set out to warm the corned beef and cabbage. Irishman Mike O’Sullivan first saw that “traditional” dish after he landed in the United States 12 years ago.

When O’Sullivan experienced his first American St. Patrick’s Day, watching Chicago’s parade on television, he was amazed by the size of it. And in Chicago, they dye the river green. “I thought we owned the place,” O’Sullivan said.

Spending St. Patrick’s Day in Southern California has been even more surprising. “I was astounded because St. Patrick’s Day to us [in Ireland] is a damp, cold, windy day. You take pity on the poor people who have to participate in it.”

But here, O’Sullivan said, “they do it miles better.”

Perhaps they do it too well. On one St. Patrick’s Day, in Carlsbad, O’Sullivan and Carole Orrell gave up trying to get into their favorite Irish pub. The line was too long, and O’Sullivan and Orrell refuse to wait or pay to get into a bar.

“To have strange people polluting your bar is a terrible thing,” she said.

Those people often try to concoct a connection to Ireland. “They say, ‘Oh, I’m Irish,’ ” O’Sullivan said, “and I say, ‘When was that? 1720?’ ”

While adopting the Americanization of the holiday commemorating the patron saint of Ireland, Mulcahy’s bar tries to keep the music, dancing and food of today’s celebration as authentic as possible. After all, a bar named for the Emerald Isle’s 32 counties must stay true to its roots.

“We don’t have green beer in here,” Mulcahy said.

What the bar does have is a scene one might expect from a 34-year-old Irish pub--in America. The cracked sign over Burbank Boulevard is only half-lit, save the word “Cocktails,” which is fully illuminated. Inside, dart boards hang on one wall. The bar stocks 10 varieties of Irish whiskey and less authentic elixirs such as a spicy liqueur called “Hot Damn!”

On St. Patrick’s Day, according to Mulcahy, drinkers stick to the day’s theme (even if they are amateurs). Pints of Guinness are ordered most often, followed by its lighter sister lager, Harp. “People can drink Budweiser all year,” he said.

Irish coffee, Irish whiskey and Irish cream round out the list. Mulcahy spots amateurs when they plop down on a stool and ask him for “Irish whiskey . . . Hennessy.” (Hennessy sounds Irish, but it’s made in France--and it’s a brandy.)

There is some confusion over St. Patrick’s Day as well. The saint was not born in Ireland but Scotland, England or Wales. His birth date hovers around AD 400, and March 17 may have been the day he died. The onetime enslaved shepherd is credited with bringing Christianity to Ireland, as well as with driving snakes from the island. Both achievements are debated.

Scholars agree, however, that St. Patrick never ate corned beef and cabbage. And he never, ever downed a pint of green beer.