Hot Springs capped its three-day St. Patrick's Day celebration on Sunday with the First Ever 16th Annual World's Shortest St. Patrick's Day Parade on Bridge Street in downtown Hot Springs featuring "Karate Kid" actor Ralph Macchio as celebrity grand marshal and dancer Stephen Laurel "tWitch" Boss as the official starter.
"We love this. It's the most festive St. Partick's Day parade we've ever been to. It's exciting to be able to see the celebrities. I've always wanted to meet the 'Karate Kid,'" said Elishia Fairfield, of Conway.
"This is the most awesome parade we've been to. We drove all the way here to tell Macchio to 'Stay Gold,'" said Emily and Victoria Walter, also of Conway.
Earlier, at the annual VIP party hosted by Visit Hot Springs, the parade's sponsor, at the Hot Springs Convention Center, Macchio kept things lighthearted when being introduced to the invitation-only crowd.
"Yeah, I'm glad I brought the crappy weather in," Macchio joked, saying he was a little concerned about the "raining on the parade thing." After successive weekends of rainy weather, Hot Springs finally enjoyed a dry, sunny weekend, with clear skies and temperatures in the mid-60s.
Macchio said he was happy and "very, very excited" to be the celebrity grand marshal. "Everybody couldn't be nicer," he said, adding that he had arrived in Hot Springs the night before.
Macchio acknowledged tWitch, the freestyle hip-hop dancer, entertainer and actor who was the runner-up on "So You Think You Can Dance" and is featured on "The Ellen DeGeneres Show," by promising "there will be no dance competition, I am promising you right now. There will be no dance competition. Not one that I'm in!"
The remark all the more humorous since tWitch's wife, Allison Renae Holker Boss, who accompanied her husband to Hot Springs, is one of the professional dancers on "Dancing with the Stars." Macchio appeared on the show in 2011, when he was paired with professional dancer Karina Smirnoff.
Macchio also showed the VIPs his St. Patrick's Day necklace, which included plastic potatoes, tying into the first parade appearance by the World's Largest Potato on Wheels. The 4-ton Big Idaho Potato and its accompanying truck and trailer, at a combined 72 feet long, almost filled the length of the parade route on Bridge Street.
"So how big is the potato thing? It's like a gigantic, enormous potato?" Macchio asked. When someone from the crowd shouted "4 tons" Macchio shook his head. "That's a lot of French fries."
Macchio and tWitch also presided over the annual crowning of the St. Patrick's Day king and queen -- Scott McClard, who co-owns and helps operate the 90-year-old McClard's Bar-B-Q Restaurant, and Dona Pettey, who owns the Ohio Club with her husband, Mike.
"If I was in 'Harry Potter' this should do something," Macchio joked after crowning Pettey queen, waving around her scepter, which is shaped like a shillelagh, as if it was a magic wand. "Expecto patronum," he said, repeating one of the boy wizard's spells, to no effect.
The joking continued as a large bouquet of flowers was brought up the stage to hand to Pettey; "wait, I'm going to come back and do it again," Macchio said, hustling back down the stairs then bolting back up to hand the queen her flowers, properly this time.
Visit Hot Springs also paid a short tribute to KaShara, one of the members of the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders, for her visits to Hot Springs over the past several years. The cheerleaders have become a fixture at the annual parade.
Just before the start of the parade, McClard officiated at the wedding of Cheryl Kauffman and James Brassfield on Bridge Street.
McClard was certified to perform weddings after he obtained an online "certificate of Christian ordination" from the United National Church of Dallas, Visit Hot Springs previously announced.
The three-day St. Patrick's weekend began with the First Ever First Annual World's Shortest St. Patrick's Zero K footrace on Friday, which covered a "grueling" 299-foot long course from Bridge Street to the Hot Springs Convention Center, and a free live concert by Smash Mouth on the Bridge Street stage Saturday night. There was another free live concert by Three Dog Night on Sunday immediately following the parade.
This marks the second year that two free concerts have been held in conjunction with the parade, but the first time Visit Hot Springs has added events to leverage a three-day weekend out of it.
"Everything's been great," Steve Arrison, CEO of Visit Hot Springs, said Sunday afternoon.
The Zero K, which doubled as a fundraiser for Tri-Lakes Court Appointed Special Advocates, or CASA, had "an incredible turnout," Arrison said.
"CASA was a great partner with that. We learned a lot of things; next year, we'll be prepared. Hopefully, we'll get a 1,000 people or more for that. It was just a lot of fun and really benefited a good cause," Arrison said.
Local on 03/18/2019