Local Officials Crack Down on Annual ‘St. Fratty’s Day’ Party at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo

Local Officials Crack Down on Annual ‘St. Fratty’s Day’ Party at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo

This party appears to be a sort of kick-off event for St. Patrick’s Day.

The San Francisco Gate reports:

California city cracks down on annual university celebration

As officials plan a major crackdown on a California university’s traditional spring celebration, those enrolled at the college and local businesses question why the students are being targeted.

St. Fratty’s Day at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo was an ad hoc day of celebration, mostly hosted by house parties in the neighborhood that abuts the campus. Students would typically congregate and roam from party to party near campus starting early in the morning. Those over 21 would make haste to the downtown bars, which would also traditionally open their doors early for revelers.

The celebration escalated in popularity in the early 2010s, but has a history that dates back several decades.

“I started in like ’97. Guys would just sit down after we closed the night before St. Patrick’s Day, put out chairs and just lined up, they were already lined up,” Colin Wenzl, manager at McCarthy’s Irish Pub in downtown SLO, told SFGATE on Thursday.

Wenzl said he thinks when SLO became the first city in the U.S. to ban smoking in public buildings in the early 1990s, that started to bring college students into bars like McCarthy’s. He also noted that when other Cal Poly campus spring celebrations, Poly Royal and Mardi Gras, faced similar crackdowns and eventually died, “St. Fratty’s Day,” the only celebration left, rose up.

“And the more those [other] events got moved, the harder this one went,” he added. He said that the celebration has increased in popularity over the past 25 years.

Eventually, it went too hard for local residents and authorities. In 2015, perceptions of the event changed after a garage roof collapsed on Hathway Avenue, a busy street that revelers shut down during the celebration. The roof could not bear the weight of the many students upon it, and nine were reportedly injured.

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