Location(s)

Mike, a customer from Brookhaven, and Irish Pipe Brigade drummer Joe McGlone

It was too good a deal to pass up.

Up near Westy’s along New Jersey Avenue in North Wildwood, the Irish Pipe Brigade was selling urinals. No, not the big porcelain models. We’re talking about the clear plastic disposable jobbies. Not to put too fine a point on things, but they were going fast. Irish Fall Festival-goers were practically jumping up and down to get their hands on one. Yessir, the customers lined up in a steady stream.

It’s not that there weren’t enough jonnies on the spot. There were plenty on hand, like rows of blue and pink Dr. Who tardises, practically on every street corner. It’s just that the Irish Pipe Brigade’s clear plastic containers served a higher calling. They were sold as collectible containers for beer.

It's been said that you don't buy beer; you rent it. So I suppose it was only a matter of time before some marketing genius identified such an obviously unfulfilled consumer need. There's a kind of poetic symmetry to it all.

For $10, you got the 32-ounce urinal—tastefully decorated with a leprechaun label—along with a ticket good for 32 ounces (by amazing coincidence!) of beer. Urinal owners also earned the right to top up their portable pissoirs with refills for just 6 bucks.

“Six dollars for 32 ounces of beer,” exclaimed the very persuasive Irish Pipe Brigade snare drummer and part-time Joe McGlone. “Where are you gonna get a deal like that down here this weekend?” This guy could sell unfiltered Camels to the surgeon general.

The band has sold the distinctive brew totes before, with great success. “You see them in Philadelphia at the St. Patrick’s Day parade," he says. “Everybody comes to us because they know we have them.”

So, of course, I bought one. Astonishingly, my wife has so far resisted my suggestions that it be displayed on the mantelpiece.

The IPB Commemorative “Let’s Get Pissed” bottle (complete with replaceable cap) was but one of many distinctive items on offer all along Olde New Jersey Avenue at the 15th annual Irish Fall Festival. If it had some connection to Irish-ness—no matter how tenuous or tawdry—someone was selling it. Indeed, the street was jammed from curb to curb with folks wearing strings of green plastic Mardi Gras beads, enormous soft-sculpture Guinness hats, IRA T-shirts, glittering shamrock deely-bobbers, “I Got Lucky” tank tops and alarmingly bright tri-color wigs.

If you were hungry, the smells alone were enough to drive you mad. Roasting ribs and sizzling chicken, hot dogs and hamburgers, funnel cake and deep-fried Oreos … where to start?

All up and down the avenue, there was music, of course—the nasal whine of bagpipes as the Philadelphia Police & Fire Pipes & Drums marched through the crowd, Captain Larry singing and strumming his way through a Jimmy Buffett set at New Jersey and 2nd, the Bogside Rogues blasting out a set of reels in the North Wildwood Fire Company tent, and the Hooligans playing for their legions of fans in the tent behind Westy’s Pub.

Earlier in the day, at the athletic field at 9th and Central, there were more pipes—lots more—at the Brian Riley Memorial Pipe Band Exhibition. About a half-dozen bands, most from the Philadelphia area and South Jersey and one from Broome County, N.Y., entertained crowds and woke up the neighbors starting at about 10 a.m. The highlight was a massed band performance of “The Minstrel Boy” and the “Wearin’ of the Green.” (And afterward, members of Brian’s old outfit, the Philadelphia Emerald Society Pipe Band, gathered to celebrate his memory at the family’s summer home.)

For North Wildwood, the Irish Festival is a wonderful way to remember summer, to slather on sun block, slip into flip-flops and keep the warm-weather fun going just a little while longer. Soon enough, the leaves will be falling.

Time for one last big blast at the beach. And what a blast.