Los Gatos Music in the Park producer revives St. Patrick’s Day festivities

St. Patrick’s Day was once a weeklong celebration in Los Gatos, with local favorite Irish pub C.B. Hannegan’s spearheading the festivities. This year, nearly seven years after the pub closed and held its last St. Patrick’s Day celebration, locals have been working on reviving the spirit of that tradition.

Neal Turley, a producer of Los Gatos Music in the Park who once worked at C.B. Hannegan’s himself, helped organize the festivities in Town Plaza Park this year.

Hosted in conjunction with the town’s usual Sunday farmers’ market, the St. Patrick’s Day event consisted of a series of musical performances including a youth cover band, an a capella group and the Black Irish Band as the finale. He said Hannegan’s used to kick off its St. Patrick’s Day festivities with a parade of bagpipe players, and Turley was able to get the group that performed all those years ago to come back to perform at this year’s event.

Grocer+Goddess also curated a “traditional St. Patrick’s Day menu” as part of the event, Turley said.

The $30 charge for the event will also help fund Los Gatos Music in the Park, a six-week concert series that’s free to the public.

“It’s hard to kind of operate that, six events throughout the summer. It’s just expensive,” Turley said.

Montebello Market hosted a series of St. Patrick’s Day celebrations last year, but since the market closed last August, Turley said he wanted to take over the tradition while also paying respects to the origins of the festivities in Los Gatos at C.B. Hannegan’s.

Turley is actually an Atherton native, but was motivated to put the event together by his love for Los Gatos and his admiration for Chris Benson and Johnny Hannegan for giving him a job when he first got to town, and for being such a pillar of the community .

“I want them to kind of still feel like they’re still part of the community, and that the community is grateful and respects them for everything that they did,” he said.

Benson, owner of C.B. Hannegan’s, said St. Paddy’s Day at the pub had evolved to such a large scale that replicating it exactly will prove difficult in the future. But he was supportive of Turley’s efforts to revive it.

“If anybody can pull it off, Neal probably can,” he said.

Going forward, Turley said he wants to shape the St. Patrick’s Day celebrations in Los Gatos to be more family-friendly and add activities for kids and families.

“I want to build a more community-based event that feels like everybody in town is welcome and shows up and is in control,” he said. “I think that’s one of the things that’s nice about having children around, it keeps people from getting too tipsy to the other side.”