San Francisco St. Patrick's Day Parade

You don’t need to be Irish to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day. Matter of fact, it’s not even (technically) a legal Holiday in the United States. There are a couple of exceptions, though. There are two place in the nation that have officially made St. Patricks Day a legal holiday, Suffolk County, Massachusetts and Savannah, Georgia. Even better, when the Governor of Suffolk County made it official in 1941, he actually signed the bill in green ink.

Needless to say, legal or not, St. Patrick’s Day is celebrated all over the nation in a big way including St. Patrick’s Day Pub Crawls, Festivals, Performances and, of course, Parades. If you are looking for things to do in San Francisco, you definitely won’t be disappointed.

Held every year since 1852, the San Francisco St. Patrick’s Day celebration is a long standing tradition in the city. Produced by the United Irish Societies on San Francisco, the official celebration includes both a parade and a festival that usually take place on the Saturday closest to March 17. It is the largest Irish event on the West Coast, attracting more than 100,000 people each year. The parade kicks off at the intersection of Market and 2nd Street and then continues down Market Street with a variety of Irish bands, hundreds of floats, Irish dancers and more as they head towards the celebratory festival at Civic Center Plaza, which is directly in front of of San Francisco’s City Hall.