WATCH a video of the town celebrating the holiday.

VIEW photos from St. Patty’s Day in Kent.

VIEW photos from an Irish belly dancing class.

The morning keepers of green brew

The glow of a half moon slices into the darkness of St. Patrick’s Day morning, making it easy to navigate the quiet streets of Kent. At 4:45 a.m., this city is not the vibrant college town most people know it to be. You can hear the change jingle in your pocket while walking down Summit Street. You can feel the hum of an automobile engine resonating through the damp air.

The scene is peaceful, for now. But the headlights of Clare Krystosik’s 2008 Volkswagen Beetle beaming down Willow Street foreshadow the events of the morning ahead. At this hour on a Tuesday morning, she wouldn’t normally be awake. But her Monday never ended because she never went to sleep. She traded the hours she’d be sleeping for the chance to slurp some green brews on St. Patty’s day before she had to go tend bar at the Brewhouse.

“First stop, Circle K,” she announces while navigating the vacant streets. She says she needs to grab some energy before she goes to work.

Krystosik sips coffee quickly while exiting the store, ignoring the searing temperature on her tongue. She begins the drive downtown. It’s approaching 5 a.m. when she parks her car on Water Street. While making a U-turn in the street to get a spot right in front of the Brewhouse, her headlights glint off the eyes of two people seated in a parked car. Junior marketing major Jerri Dodge and Brad Hays, sophomore environmental geography major, wait patiently for the doors of the Brewhouse to open at 5:30 a.m. They are the first signs of student life downtown. Hays says in a sarcastic tone that he is just a little Irish and excited for the day. Dodge says they have the day booked for drinking.

One by one, the first-shift employees of the Brewhouse shuffle through the front doors with coffee and tired eyes. The street is still quiet.

“Usually there is a line by this time,” says Brewhouse owner Jimmy Tribuzzo. “I’m surprised there’s not many people.”

That would change soon enough.

-Darren D’Altorio

Tired people, happy spirits at the Water Street Tavern

Tired, foggy-looking eyes belonging to people in green attire pack the Water Street Tavern. It’s 6:30 a.m., but it seems as if it’s a Friday night. Despite droopy eyes, excited conversations about the day’s upcoming shenanigans echo loudly amongst the crowded booths, tables and barstools.

Standing at the newly renovated side bar next to the patio entrance is Jennifer Lemus, bartender and sophomore biology major, who recently started a six-and-a-half-hour shift.

“I’m pretty surprised about the turnout, to be honest,” she said. “It’s a big deal. This is my first time experiencing it.”

Quarters can be heard filling the jukebox; then “Give It Away” by the Red Hot Chili Peppers jams out of the bar’s sound system. A guy with a green mullet wig starts bopping his head to the beat, then continues to set up a playlist .

Mugs upon mugs are shipped to customers by the second, with cheery service despite the early hour. As soon as breakfast is declared ready, customers start lining up for the day’s special of egg soufflé, Potatoes O’Brien, sausage links and a mimosa, all for $5.

“We always try to do something a little better breakfast-wise, other than just scrambled eggs,” said Mike Beder, the bar’s owner.

The line from the tiny stage where the serving trays are set up grows all the way to the back of the side bar and begins to wrap around the wall.

“It’s always funny to see the kids first thing in the morning, then see them again later at night when they’ve obviously taken a nap in the same things they’re wearing now and (then) wear the same things out,” Beder said.

-Robert Checkal

‘They’ve been drinking like crazy’

It’s just after 10 a.m, and Water Street Tavern is about half full, the bar itself having several empty seats, as most of the morning drunks are standing up and conversing over the music in small groups. Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ on a Prayer” is playing, and some are screaming along.

Coors, Coors Light and various Budweiser glossy paper shamrocks are repetitively scattered on the walls. Outside on the sidewalk, a couple of women dressed head-to-toe in green stumble over an attempted Irish step dance.

It’s $4.50 for a pint of Guinness. Bartender Pat Hawkins serves one up. He wears a white T-shirt with green lettering that reads “Paddy Says Relax.”

“People have been going at it all day,” Hawkins says as he scurries from customer to customer around the rectangular bar, still offering a friendly handshake and a few moments of his time. “They’ve been drinking like crazy.”

It’s shortly after 10:15 a.m. The bar crowds in waves as groups of friends shift from background to bar front to order pitchers of beer or rounds of shots.

Altogether, about 40 people are inside, certainly not enough to consider the place “full.” This is the dedicated crowd, and the buzz levels are evident on the faces of customers.

One man in a plastic green derby with a gold “luck of the Irish” band nods his head drunkenly with half-closed eyes and increased intensity, until he throws up the index- and-pinky-finger metal sign as “Crazy Bitch” by Buckcherry plays.

A woman at the bar says she went to the Brewhouse at 5:30 a.m. and has been drinking since. A bartender takes a photo of her and her friends, and “SportsCenter” comes on the flat screen TV with a “this just in” announcement that Steelers owner Dan Rooney has just been nominated U.S. ambassador to Ireland.

-Nick Baker

Ray’s Place: A mix of young and old on St. Patty’s Day

The first thing you notice before even stepping foot in Ray’s Place on Water Street is the man at the door. Not particularly dressed for the Irish celebrations, he asks for everyone’s ID except the elderly man behind me, who is clearly of age.

With permission granted, I step into a scene where music bombards my ears like a blast of hot air to the face. Nothing Celtic, just the top hits of the week, booms out of the overhead speakers. Green streamers and leis hang from the ceiling and from the antlers of the moose head that is mounted proudly above the bar.

It’s humid and hyper inside the little pub. Pitchers of green beer pass by as the waiters and waitresses of Ray’s try to keep up with drink and food orders. There’s laughter and elbow-bumping as people exit the bar just as quickly as others enter.

A couple sits at a table, both decked out in green and white face paint with beads and leprechaun-like hats. It’s 12:19 p.m., and the man already seems past the point of tipsy. The woman is more reserved, holding her glass of green beer in her hand and listening to his slurs.

“I got here at 6:30 a.m,” he says, the words stumbling out of his mouth.

She smiles, and then he smiles. Their teeth are tinted green, but they give each other a kiss regardless. Pulling apart, the woman’s cheek is smeared with the green and white paint that used to stick to her boyfriend’s nose. She excuses herself to wipe it off in the bathroom.

The majority of the crowd at Ray’s is college-aged, but an elderly couple sits in the midst of the party, enjoying a meal and a few drinks with friends. Ray’s is specializing in Irish dishes like corned beef and cabbage and Irish stew, along with Irish whiskey. The older gentlemen at the table seem to be enjoying the latter happily.

More people come into the bar, and this reporter’s time is up at Ray’s. Fifteen minutes of the bar life on St. Patty’s Day is enough to last this minor until next year.

-Laura Lofgren

They look like my parents at the bar

Upon entering Kent Lanes, patrons are faced with a difficult decision: Go straight and join the crowds of families and bowling teams celebrating their St. Patrick’s Day with a great game of 10-pin, or go left, where the bass is thumping and the lights are dark besides the occasional neon beer sign.

I went left.

Ready for the party and excited for my first legal St. Patrick’s Day, I admit I was slightly disappointed to see 13 of what looked like my parents and their friends sitting at the bar and no one on the dance floor.

I took a seat in a booth and ordered a Bud Light Lime. As Kid Rock’s “All Summer Long” began to play, I couldn’t help but find myself examine each “adult” thinking, “They can’t party. Gosh, don’t they know that?”

Then I realized I was mistaken. These adults party just like any college student. Decked out in green, glowing necklaces and a plastic leprechaun hat sat “my grandpa,” taking classic MySpace shots with the “hottie mommy” beside him dawned in her sparkling green shirt, cardboard crown and shiny beads.

His friend across the bar with the snow white hair stood out even more sitting next to the woman with jet black hair. His friend “hollered” from across the bar for him to join the photo.

As he made his way across the bar the hottie mommy met my eyes. She smiled as if she had not seen me in years and ran to my booth.

“Did you go to field?!” she asked leaning slightly on the table to keep her balance.

“Excuse me?” The fact that I had absolutely no idea what field was must have be obvious in my face.

“Field?”

“No?”

She turned around to face a younger girl sitting at the bar with a green polka-dot shirt.

“Are you the one from field?” she asked with a new confidence.

The girl gave a slightly confused smile but nodded.

“You’re the girl from field! I thought it was her!” She said for the entire bar to hear before laughing and starting a conversation with her newly found friend.

I wonder if when I’m an “adult” I will still be taking MySpace photos with my friends at bars and trying to make connections with people I have never met by asking, “Did you go to the Kent?”

-Pamela Crimbchin

‘They’ve been drinking like crazy’

It’s 9:56 a.m. At the corner of Main and Lincoln streets, a red Medina Supply Co. truck pours a load of fresh concrete at the new Kent State University gateway. Across Main Street, a group of people sit outside and drink and smoke cigarettes on the Robin Hood Inn patio.

They wear an assortment of green apparel that includes plastic green hats and green T-shirts. Some are adorned with cheap plastic beads. From a distance, very little is distinguishable about the crowd, other than the fact that more than a few beers have been ingested by the raucous, whooping bunch of a dozen or so.

On the corner of Main and Willow, an attractive blonde with an “Irish Drinking Team ’09” T-shirt, shamrocks shorts and a springy shamrock headband phones her friends, seeing where they are and whether they plan to start drinking. It is shortly after 10 a.m.

Heading down Main Street, across from Jimmy John’s, a cyclist dressed in a black windbreaker and matching pants with a peace sign button on his left breast pocket stops to ask for a cigarette.

The man also sports a green button up shirt under the windbreaker. After asking for a smoke, he proclaims, “I’m Irish, too,” as if someone had implied anyone on this walk was in fact Irish. No one had.

Only a handful of green-wearing individuals dot the corners of Main and Water streets.

It’s just after 10 a.m., and Water Street Tavern is about half-full, the bar itself with several empty seats, as most of the a.m. drunks are standing up and conversing over the music in small groups. Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ on a Prayer” is playing, and some are screaming along.

Coors, Coors Light and various Budweiser glossy paper shamrocks are repetitively scattered on the walls. Outside on the sidewalk, a couple girls, dressed head-to-toe in green, stumble over an attempted Irish stepdance.

It’s $4.50 for a pint of Guinness. Bartender Pat Hawkins serves one up. He wears a white T-shirt with green lettering that reads “Paddy Says Relax.”

“People have been going at it all day,” Hawkins says as he scurries from customer to customer around the rectangular bar but still offers a friendly handshake and a few moments of his time. “They’ve been drinking like crazy,” he says.

It’s shortly after 10:15 a.m. The bar crowds in waves as groups of friends shift from background to bar front to order pitchers of beer or rounds of shots.

About 40 people are inside, certainly not enough to consider the place “full.” This is the dedicated crowd, and the buzz levels are evident on the faces of customers.

One guy in a plastic, green derby with a gold “luck of the Irish” band nods his head drunkenly with half-closed eyes and increased intensity until he throws up the index and pinky finger metal sign as “Crazy Bitch” by Buckcherry plays.

A girl at the bar claims she went to the Brewhouse at 5:30 a.m. and has been drinking since. A bartender takes a photo of her and her friends, and “SportsCenter” comes on the flatscreen TV with a “this just in” announcement that Steelers owner Dan Rooney has just been nominated U.S. ambassador to Ireland.

-Nick Baker