Not as long as we're around it doesn't.
The unofficial theme of the annual Cape May AOH Irish Fall Festival in North Wildwood was global warming.
Well, actually, it was Wildwood warming.
It was so hot on Saturday, September 21, a crowd gathered and enviously watched a trainer give the Annheuser Busch Clydesdale horses their daily shower. “I wish he’d shoot some my way,” said one woman, sweat making rivulets from her hairline to her cheeks.
But that didn’t stop thousands of people from strolling up and down Old New Jersey Avenue in this small seaside town last weekend, looking for the best t-shirt slogan and bargain, buying curlicue mountains of butterfly fries (ruined with squirts of processed orange cheese liquid), green plastic glasses of Bud (a sponsor of the event), and ducking inside the music tent (which at least was opened on one side to entertain any wandering sea breezes) to hear some of the best Celtic bands on the east coast, including Paddy’s Well, the Bogside Rogues, Searson, Scythian, and Derek Warfield.
Local Celtic rockers Blackthorn hold a complementary event in Wildwood, the next town over and just a shuttle bus ride away, that kept the music rocking with electrifying fiddler Eileen Ivers, Albany, NY’s Jimmy Kelly Band, Black 47, Timlin and Kane, Raymond McGroary, 5 Quid, and Random Blond.
So what if all the performers left the stage looking like they’d just gotten out of the shower. So it was hot. No one really seemed to mind. It sure didn’t keep anybody home in the air conditioning, including the pipe and drum bands–one which came down from Binghamton, NY–to show their stuff (in those really warm costumes, hugging those bags of hot air) to honor the late piper Brian Riley, who died of a massive heart attack several years ago. On Saturday, his family donated a defibrillator in his name to the Wildwood Recreation Center.
Though one T-shirt promised, “What happens here, stays here,” www.irishphiladelphia.com was there for the entire weekend. Since a picture is worth 1,000 words, check out the photographic evidence of what happened there, right here.
