Why do they still dye the rivers green for St. Patricks Day? It's not a good look for downtown Chicago.
Blackout@kbin.run to 
I just think the novelty of these type of displays was up in the 90s, It's time for an upgrayedd. I propose leprechauns flying up and down the river wearing water jet packs, shooting people with their Chicago-style hot dog cannons would be more with the times. What's your idea?
Fun fact: It’s actually beneficial that they do this because they use Gatorade which has electrolytes and as we all know, that’s what the plants crave.
I don’t remember the comedian, but I remember the joke:
“If they can dye it green for St. Patrick’s Day, why can’t they dye it blue the other days of the year?”
Isn't that from the fugitive?
Maybe, I don’t remember. I thought it was from a comedian, but I could be wrong. (Memory isn’t what it used to be. 🤷🏻)
Blue-gitive.
Yes. I was thinking of that line from the movie when I read the OP.
I've seen apartment complexes that have little fake ponds and rivers flowing throughout the grounds that are dyed blue. It doesn't look good. It looks like the water with that cheap toilet bowl cleaner in it.
The crowds it attracts today still are huge. What do you mean the novelty has worn down? I have lived in the area since 2012 and I still haven’t gone down to see this because I don’t want to deal with the crowds.
On another note, I guess I’ll be there in a jiffy if they shot me with an Italian beef - wet (not from the river) and lots of giardiniera.
Ahh yes! The only correct way to eat ur Italian beef.
Straight out of the river!
Yes, Italian beef for St. Patricks day. Hahaha.
In all honesty I wouldn’t blame you or Chicago, they are super delish. (Edit grammar)
Haha! Yeah, I read the post before coffee that they were shooting Chicago-style hot dogs so I was countering with Italian Beef. 🤣
I should probably wake up more before commenting.
With the money they save in river dye they could paint the riverside with Italian beef, can you just imagine it?
Now I’m hungry.
Fuck yeah. What's your preferred place to get from? Johnnies is the one I'm most familiar with and enjoy.
Johnnies all the way.
Cheesy, no peppers for me. But if they wrapped them in paper and shot them with a T-shirt gun, I guarantee it would be popular.
This is really making me miss home. Maybe I'll move back in a few years.
Head over to the unpopular opinion group, you're not asking a question, you're stating an opinion.
IKR, I'm starting to see more and more of this kind of questions here. I wish mods do something about it
I'm asking you why they do this when it looks like crap? People actually like seeing a neon green river? What is wrong with those people? See, 3 valid questions.
Why they do this? = Question.
Why the do this when it looks like crap? = opinion. Regardless of how it’s presented.
People have different tastes.
Can you not fathom this idea?
Yeah, if I see a green river I think pollution.
As a Dubliner (Ireland, not one of the many Dublins across the pond), I must say that Americans are really weird about Paddy's Day. We have a large parade in Dublin and smaller ones in smaller cities, and then those of us who have kids ho to family fairs, and the rest for a pint at the local. We leave the city centre to the tourists who get shitfaced on overpriced, prepoured Guinness for no good reason. And even though we did some weird things with our river (the time in the slime), we never dyed the Liffey green.
Americans look for any reason to get shitfaced. Ask anyone what Cinco de Mayo is about about. Most wont have any clue.
which, you'd think, hey France, we hate the french (which is hilarious considering the Statue of Liberty and La Fayette).... Mexicans beating the French should be easy to recall for us.
The whole French thing is so goddamn funny, from an outside perspective - I mean, France is basically one of the few major countries the USA never fought a land or proxy war against - their only war was the Quasi war which was solely smaller naval battles and was clearly the US fault. And France was almost always willing to back the US...while the US let them down countless times.
ehhhh... I dunno man there was this whole indochina thing :|
What exactly do you mean?
Have you never met an American? Look at it from the perspective of an inferiority complex and you may begin to understand.
It's the lack of curiosity or effort to act on it. If I have a question, it's moments before I open the phone and check for an answer. I always get annoyed at people who ask me questions instead of doing it themselves.
St. Patrick's Day in America has always been more of a celebration of Irish-American immigrant culture than it is of Ireland itself.
We have a lot of people who live far from their country of origin, so they get really excited when they get to celebrate their heritage and get a special national holiday. Then of course the rest of us Americans love a good time and excuse to party, so we love celebrating alongside them. It's all in good fun. When I was younger, there was a whole neighborhood that went off the hook for stuff like St. Patrick's Day, Mardi Gras, and stuff like that. My friends and I would always be so excited to go down there and party it up. It's a really good time for everyone involved.
In Liverpool, which prides itself on its Liverpool roots, Paddy's Day is one of the days to avoid town and most of the pubs for me. Absolute carnage. The other ones to avoid are Grand National weekend, particularly Ladies Day, and Mother's Day.
Mother's Day? Really? That's quite surprising. Why is that?
It's a drinking city. People go out for a family meal, get pissed up, things get raucous, fights happen. It's not everyone, but if you work in bars it's one of the nights you dread, especially in the rougher places where the fights kick off. I worked in one of the roughest city centre bars many years back and the fights between women were way worse than the ones between men. Absolutely vicious.. And I say that as a woman btw.
Here in the states St. Patrick's day is more about Mad Sweeney from American Gods or The Lucky Charms mascot than it is about the guy who invented the Shamrock as a Catholic mnemonic. Go to your local department store like Target or Walmart and look for St. Patrick's Day seasonals and you'll find four-leaf clovers where shamrocks should be.
We can't tell the difference and don't really care. We'll just take our kids to McDonalds to get a minty milkshake.
A vile, "minty" milkshake.
A vile, “minty” milkshake.
Not as vile as its mascot, Uncle O’Grimacey
A recent article asking the same thing on Tampa Bay's activities
While there doesn't seem to be obvious red flags of harm, something doesn't feel right to me about dumping chemicals into the environment that eventually break down. The article says the company making this particular dye warns about it in higher quantities or letting it become concentrated in places downstream, and wearing protective equipment when handling the larger amounts. How much of that is only legalize to protect from misuse vs. actual tested issues?
I just think that color green is ugly and looks like industrial waste
it's how you make more ninja turtles though, and lord knows we need them now more than ever!
Chicago is the only city other than New York that makes enough pizza to support growing teenager mutant ninja turtles.
But New York probably has more sewer rats trained in karate.
That was hard to read, and amounts to "It's safe and used responsibly but people are scared of color green so it must be bad."
It's wasteful and a bad look, but many things are only hazardous in high concentrations. Even a tanker full of milk getting dumped into a small lake could cause mass die offs. The PPE is probably more about preventing it from being breathed in or getting in their mouths. You can check out the SDS here.
Would any animals in the water not breathe it in or get it in their mouth?
The deadly chemical known as Dihydrogen Monoxide absolutely fills that river, you know? Might want to keep your distance.
This causes no harm to the wildlife and is a fun celebration. People here are always talking about "let people enjoy things" when that thing is some counter-culture thing. Well, I say let people enjoy things, even when that thing is a mainstream holiday. Have some fun. Let loose.
I don't mean to sound all new agey, but I feel like we're disrespecting the planet by dyeing a freakin river.
I think that's nothing compared to all the, y'know, irreparable destruction and pollution we do to the to the planet tbh.
In what capacity is it anymore disrespect than doing literally anything else?
I don't care so much about the novelty. I want to know what impacts this has on the environment.
I assume it's been studied to be non-toxic for fish. Or at least I hope it has. But what about other effects it might have? Does it significantly reduce visibility and impact the ecosystem in that way? Some other effects?
Pretty sure you can eat Fluorescein with no ill effects other than turning your piss dayglo. It's very widely used as a 'non-toxic' tracer dye so I'd imagine studies have been done.
Have they done studies on this scale? Probably. But still a valid question. If nothing else it kind of desensitizes us to pouring green sludge into rivers. Fuck do I know, I'd be freaked out if I was a fish. I'd also eat a incandescent neon green fish, but that's on the fish.
They do it at scale once a year.
Doing something isn't the same as studying it, though. If I were to eat a few litres of ice-cream that's not a study on the effects of excessive ice-cream consumption, that's just someone eating an unhealthy amount of ice-cream. People do stupid things all the time with the excuse that that's how it's always been done.
True but if they want an opportunity to study the effects, there it is.
Effects includea nausea, loss of motor control, and vomiting. And singing. But mainly vomiting.
Metric or imperial?
Orange sludge!
That too, whatever ain't blue, gray, or poop colored doesn't belong in the river.
Honestly this is the thing I'm most worried about. I have little doubt that it's been studied to be non-toxic. I said as much in my first comment. I'm more worried about more-difficult-to-study effects like on the behaviour of the fish.
I mean there's too few of them left to make a good sample size anyway so fuck it let's dye the river like it's potato famine o clock
This stuff is regularly used to mark water flows that someone wants to trace, for example when a stream disappears underground and it's unclear where it joins the watershed again. It's assume there's not much to it.
Tribal custom. They do it because they’ve always done it.
Upgrayedds not gonna be too happy about this.
How is it not a good look?
Well I live near an actual toxic river that has been cleaning up lately. I just think dying it green makes it look gross, maybe it's time to projection map it green or give everyone green tinted glasses so then everything is green and you don't have to make the river an oooz color.
Lol sounds like a you problem. It's all biodegradable and good fun. It actually does look cool. Long time Chicagoans and new visitors still like it. Sorry you don't.
Ah yes, a perfectly safe dye... that has warning labels on it indicating it's a bad idea to use a lot and it's toxic when concentrated. Yep, pefectly safe!
Anything is toxic when concentrated enough. Fish food kills fish at high volumes; fish kill humans at high volumes.
What's crazy is there are really good ways to dilute things--namely using a high volume of water...
Hell, water and oxygen are toxic. The dose makes the poison.
Yeah I honestly always thought it looked really cool too
Isn't the dye something non toxic though?
There are water-tracing dyes out there that are designed specifically to be able to dump into water to see where it's going -- like, to find leaks and such -- and I bet that they're using one of those.
IIRC you can normally get red or green.
googles
https://www.amazon.com/water-tracing-dye/s?k=water+tracing+dye
LPT: if you need this for home purposes, for example to find where your toilet tank is leaking, kool-aid works really well.
I mean, they're not mutually-exclusive. You can do both.
I this what you want?
Well I don't know about anyone else, but I certainly do.
I want to see this,
Wrong one
Release the Lepredrones!
It's the hotdog cannons that really made this fly for me.
In case it’s not just a typo, it’s “upgrade” not “upgrayedd”
May I recommend the movie Idiocracy to you? You will be one of today's lucky 10,000
Better than a whoosh! Thanks I’ll check it out.
To be fair, the context here has nothing to do with the movie, just the spelling being done for funsies. But it's still a fun watch.
Screw little rivers. Dye the oceans green.
I want XKCD to do the math on this one
3.52 x 10^(20) gallons according to the US national parks service.
The first Amazon result says a gallon works for 12000 (1.2 x10^4). So 3 x 10^(16). But that might be just for "detectable", so more to be obviously green.
The people who make the green dye are probably perpetuating it because it means an influx in dye sales.
All this strikes up another good question, why don't they dye it gold for Oktoberfest, red for Dyngus Day, etc.? It seems incredibly overshadowing one culture in a multicultural city has outright terraforming privileges while others get a couple of tiny cornerstreets to call home once a year.
Because tracing dye is originally green. It's just a happy coincidence that it ended up working for Saint Patricks day.
More people should celebrate dyngus day
I used to go to the national parades for them because they're nearby. It's very nice.
better yet, make a green dye outta algae, so that it actually does something other than look interesting. And knowing how rivers in cities work, it's polluted enough that algae will die off withing a few days tops, so it'd be efficient
It'd be bad. Real bad. An algae bloom of massive proportions. It has one huge issue.
Enough algae to make the rivers run green will use up enough oxygen at night to kill off fish and oxygen hungry invertebrates, starting a chain reaction of death.
Now you have a river full of dead organisms, so they start decomposing thanks to microbes. You know what many types of bacteria love? Oxygen. So they start using up oxygen, multiplying all the while. Night hits and the algae need to use oxygen, but a bunch die because there's not enough. Now the river is full of literally hundreds, maybe thousands of tons of decomposing matter. The river largely goes anoxic (meaning there's no oxygen) so things start dying left and right. A bunch of those bacteria can live with and without oxygen, so they use up what they can and keep on chugging without.
Now we've moved from aerobic respiration to anaerobic. You know what the primary byproducts of anaerobic respiration are? Organic acids and alcohols, which smell. The river begins to smell like an infected wound. It's no longer green but deep, murky brown from the suspension of decomposing organisms. This continues until the river flushes everything out, but it kills what's downstream as it continues until it hits the ocean, where it likely continues to kill everything in the vicinity until it becomes dilute enough.
I'm a microbiologist and worked with algae and cyanobacteria as an undergrad. Never underestimate the impact of uncountable billions of trillions of living organisms.
oh damn. more colossal waves of death is the last thing a celebration of the Irish need. thanks for setting it straight
I like that you're thinking of alternatives, though! Don't ever lose that, it's less common than you might think.
https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/hazards/hab/great-lakes.html
TL;DR: Algae would almost certainly be worse than whatever they are using.
Using green algae with what's happening in Lough Neagh would be a bad look.
But perfectly on brand for the plastic Paddy's.