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The Good, The Bad and the Ugly

stevew

If you’re a Western movie buff, the chances are you’ve seen the 1966 classic “spaghetti western” film called The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, starring Cint Eastwood and directed by Sergio Leone. The reason I mention the film is strictly due to the title. Whenever I think of debriefing or reviewing a collaborative project or task at work, “The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly” keeps me on point when thinking of discussion points and where to improve after the task is done. As far as St. Fratty’s Day goes, I can only think of the bad and the ugly.

There is nothing good for the neighborhood that comes from this unlawful assembly. There is a lot of bad and ugly. High-risk behavior, particularly when large quantities of alcohol have been consumed, entitlement, as well as the lack of respect for people’s property.

Article

The Mustang Daily wrote an article titled St. Fratty’s 2024 Recap: Property Damage, DUIs and Unruly Gatherings. The article covers the bad and ugly side of St. Fratty’s Day. It describes how a fraternity member came back to his apartment to find random strangers helping themselves to his belongings, including his camera. In a separate incident, a tenant of a house located at the epicenter of the illegal gathering also describes their ordeal as belligerent people climbing onto their roof.

Terrifying

The tenant also wrote a letter to an SCLC administrative personnel to distribute to the SCLC, describing her terrifying ordeal. (The email was not distributed to SCLC.) The house occupants barricaded their door as people were trying to force their way into their home. So many people were on the roof that they were afraid it would collapse on top of them. They called the police for help numerous times and were hung up on. Eventually, SLOPD came and issued a citation to the tenant for the unruliness in her yard. When she asked for help in getting the people off the roof, SLOPD officers said she would have to do it herself.

Damage

Regarding media coverage of the 2024 St. Fratty’s Day damage, most of the coverage covers damage to Cal Poly property. There was some coverage of the damage to property in the neighborhood, although not all damage was reported to authorities. Regardless, the damage did occur. And with regards to the guy doing pull-ups on a wire, it was a power supply line to the house – an electrical wire – not a telephone wire. You can clearly see where it enters the snorkel on the roof. Although telephone line sounds “less dangerous”. The Mustang news article also mentions broken fences, gutters ripped off of homes, and broken backyard furniture. Just what possesses people’s minds to invade yards and destroy stuff?

The damage not mentioned is that a homeowner had their house sewer line collapse in the front yard. Just imagine the weight of a crowd in your front yard to collapse your sewer line. Now, you have to fix it. Or a neighbor who came home late the night before St. Fratty’s Day from lobster fishing and couldn’t find parking so he parked on Bond Street. Being new to the area, he didn’t know about St. Fratty’s Day. The next day, he found his car vandalized, scratched up, and its windshield broken. It was never reported to SLOPD. What’s the use? It’s just the collateral damage of St. Fratty’s day. Right?

This all is “the ugly” associated with St. Fratty’s Day. It’s not fun when a drunken mob breaks your stuff, and the City or Cal Poly allows a neighborhood invasion. But on the plus side, the police said “nobody was seriously injured or died,” according to KSBY. That’s where we are at as a community, celebrating that nobody died. Is this even real life? It’s less than two months away from St. Fratty’s Day 2025; let’s see what this year brings.

The Boiling Frog Metaphor and Other Idioms

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When it comes to St. Fratty’s day in the Alta Vista neighborhood, the neighborhood I live in, a couple of idioms come to mind.

Asleep at the wheel

The first one is “Asleep at the wheel” which is the same as “Asleep at the switch”. Both idioms describe a vehicle of some sort. Wheel describes a steering wheel and the switch describes a train’s dead-man switch, the power mechanism. The metaphorical vehicle describes some sort of task, job, or assignment that requires full attention. Falling asleep at the wheel of a moving vehicle, or if the train operator doesn’t pay attention to the train’s speed obviously can have disastrous consequences. This idiom describes when someone wasn’t doing their job, paying enough attention, was negligent or is completely unaware of things happening around them.

I think of this when I think about the roof collapse on St Fratty’s day in 2015, the subsequent Cal Poly report that followed, and the City’s response to illegal fraternities not conforming with the city zoning ordinance. The City must’ve read the report. Right? The report mentioned that the party started at an illegal fraternity operating in the neighborhood, yet they did nothing.

The Boiling Frog

Not an idiom but a metaphor that is appropriate to the situation in our neighborhood is the one about the boiling frog. The boiling frog myth or metaphor talks about how when a frog is put into a pan of boiling water, it jumps out immediately in order to survive. However, when the frog is put into tepid water and the temperature of the water is slowly increased and ultimately brought to a boil, the frog just sits there and ultimately dies. It’s a story used to describe how failing to act on an incremental problem or situation will usually have disastrous consequences. I think of this metaphor when I think of St. Fratty’s Day. We, as a city, have become accustomed to it, make excuses about it, shrug our shoulders, and move on.

What the heck?

“What the heck? That’s just crazy!!”. “How can the city let that happen!?” Good question. I have two childhood friends who live overseas; one of them lives in Bristol, and the other used to live in Cambridge. Both are large university cities. Nothing like St. Fratty’s Day would ever happen in those places. It just wouldn’t. An illegal event of this magnitude that’s allowed to continue and grow continually larger with each passing year, with high-risk behavior, would be shut down. They can’t believe it when they both see videos of St. Fratty’s Day, with large crowds on roofs. “Where are the police!?” Again, a question I can’t answer. One thing is certain: we as a city have slowly normalized this event when we really should be embarrassed. It’s not normal. We have become a community just like in the Hans Christian Andersen tale, The Emperor’s New Clothes.

Mixed Messaging

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It’s called St. Fratty’s Day.

It’s St. Fratty’s Day! That’s what people call the event. You can Google it or use the hashtag #StFrattys, and the infamous Cal Poly dawn drunk fest and neighborhood takeover will pop up.

Difficulty

However, Cal Poly administration and certain City officials have difficulty saying it. It seems it is no longer politically correct to call the event by its recognized name. Administrators and leadership call it several names including “St. Patrick’s Day pre-party”, “the street party”, or “St. Pat’s”.

But it is a stand-alone event, separate from St. Patrick’s Day. It is not St. Patrick’s Day, which is celebrated annually on March 17th. The date of St. Fratty’s Day varies yearly and is based on Cal Poly’s academic calendar. It historically happens on the weekend before winter finals. It’s a made-up event that originated at a Cal Poly fraternity located in a neighborhood near campus to avoid the fines associated with St. Patrick’s Day, hence the name St. Fratty’s. Just like the daytime rages called ZB-Tahiti, Dage Coach, and Theta Chi-land, that’s the name it was given by the fraternity that started it.

Distancing

At the November meeting of the Student Community Liason Committee (SCLC), Jason Mockford, Senior Director of Leadership & Service at Cal Poly, mentioned that they don’t say “St. Fratty’s” and clarified that the fraternity that started St. Fratty’s Day, is no longer affiliated with Cal Poly and fraternities are not involved with the event. Well, I disagree. The particular fraternity that started St. Fratty’s in 2009 may no longer be affiliated with Cal Poly, however, Cal Poly’s fraternities have continued to celebrate and amplify the event.

Sororities go to the fraternities to pre-game before dawn. Pre-gaming involves downing a large amount of alcohol to get intoxicated before heading to the main event, the neighborhood takeover at Hathway and Bond Street.

In 2024, noise complaints to SLOPD began just after 3 a.m. and several documented fraternity houses in the neighborhood were issued noise citations before 4 a.m. A huge fraternity party was broken up by SLOPD later that morning and a police report was filed because it was so disruptive.

Social Media

There is tons of stuff on social media about St. Fratty’s Day. An infamous “SLO-lebrirty” Uber driver named Big Larry travels up to San Luis Obispo to drive during certain events like St. Fratty’s Day and works a 14-hour day, shuttling people back and forth between the numerous fraternity parties starting early in the morning around 3:30 am that wakes the neighborhood. Big Larry posted a video on Instagram of his first customers at 3:30 a.m. on St. Fratty’s. A young woman asks her fellow passengers, “Are we going to Beta?” at 00:00:36 seconds into the video. “Beta” is a shortened version of Beta Theta Pi, with a fraternity house on Foothill and a satellite fraternity house on Fredericks.

I don’t know when calling the neighborhood takeover St. Fratty’s day became a slur because even Cal Poly mentioned St Fratty’s in an After-Incident Report published after a roof collapsed during the event in 2015. Refusing to call all it by its proper name and using any other name is confusing.