Hoboken residents plan ‘Lepre-Con’ celebrations to replace St. Patrick’s Day parade - POLL

“You can cancel the parade, but you can’t cancel the party!” says organizer

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KERRY O'SHEA,

IrishCentral Staff Writer

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Will the "Lepre-Con" see St. Patrick's Day revelers drinking just as much in Hoboken?

Photo by Google Images

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The first annual ‘Lepre-Con,’ a spin-off of the popular New York City Christmas event ‘Santa-Con,’ is set to take to the streets of Hoboken on Saturday March 3rd. The event is being organized as a replacement for the recently cancelled annual St. Patrick’s Day Parade for the city.

Jamie Darrah, organizer of the new event for the city, told CBS that, "We want everyone to come up and come out and dress up and enjoy the festivities. Hopefully we'll have a set bar crawl listed on our website."

Similar to Santa-Con in New York City, which sees revellers don creative Christmas costumes, Lepre-Con looks to participants to pile on the green in leprechaun inspired outfits.

Originally, the Hoboken St. Patrick’s Day Parade, which would have been 26 years old this March, was planned to be moved to a Wednesday evening instead of its typical Saturday morning following the marked increase in bad behavior by attendants last year.

The day of the Parade sees bars opening their doors and serving alcohol at 9am and continuing late into the night.

Mayor Zimmer said of 2011’s Parade that “It reached a fever pitch with high levels of property damage, urination on the streets and people’s homes, reports of sexual assaults, there were flower pots that were even thrown on our firemen when they responded to a call.”

34 arrests were made and nearly 300 citations were issued for public urination, open containers of alcohol and other violations.
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Read More:

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Organizer of ‘Lepre-Con’, Jamie Darrah, insists that this year’s new event will promote responsible behavior on behalf of the participants. “You should get very creative with your costumes, but we are promoting that you be responsible,” Darrah told CBS.

Matt Harris, creator of the ‘Not Hoboken Parade’ Facebook event, looked to participants to behave in a responsible manner, just as Darrah does.

“Don’t be an idiot,” he wrote on the group’s main page. “The Hoboken parade has be (sic) canceled because some people can’t handle day drinking. So why should the actions of some ruin it for us all? Simply put, it shouldn’t.”

‘Lepre-Con’ ups the ante on the bar-crawls that were originally being organized by having participants deck themselves out in green leprechaun-inspired outfits. “Dress up in full Leprechaun garb or other Irish festive gear and head over to Hoboken, NJ from 9am onward on Saturday March 3, 2012,” says their Lepre-Con’s website.

Lepre-Con’s website, which proclaims “YOU CAN CANCEL THE PARADE, BUT YOU CAN'T CANCEL THE PARTY!!" states that it will be adding additional bar-crawl details in the weeks to come.

So, what do you think of ‘Lepre-Con’? Good idea or bad idea? Will people actually behave more responsibly?

To give you some idea what what "Lepre-Con" could be like he's a photo gallery of Santa-Con 2010:

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