Krajewski says some St. Patty’s shirts offensive to Irish

Joan Krajewski is half Irish. And she just can’t understand why a store like Spencer’s Gifts would sell a T-shirt depicting a leprechaun drunk and urinating.

Some of those “T-shirts go beyond offensive,” she tells NewsWorks, after publishing an editorial today featured on Philly.com.

“I’m Irish on my mother’s side (Anna McColgan) and know how to take a joke, and I know well enough that the Irish love a good celebration as well as a good wake. I also know there are more who use St. Patrick’s as a day to drink, party and have a good time,” the 6th District Councilwoman writes.

She introduced a resolution to City Council today calling on the store to stop selling “merchandise that degrades the Irish people.”

We asked Krajewski about events like the Shamrock Shuttle and Erin Express. Two of the city’s handful of bar-hopping events, they bring people from all over dressed in green to various bustling corridors, red cups in hand. The Shuttle ran through Krajewski’s district earlier this month, prompting the local civic association to beef up patrols in Mayfair near bars along Frankford Avenue in the Northeast.

“Fortunately I’m not home that day, so I don’t know what goes on,” Krajewski said. While Krajewski acknowledged “everyone out there going bar to bar,” she said “I don’t know exactly what they’re doing.” But, she said, it’s all in the spirit of “celebration.”