Sam Heughan was pouring whisky into strangers’ mouths on Sixth Avenue, and nobody was complaining.
The Outlander star served as Grand Marshal for this year’s NYC Tartan Day Parade, and he took the job seriously — fist raised, Sassenach Spirits in hand, working the barricades like he’d been waiting all year for this. The crowd had. Phones went up. Fans screamed. A few people probably cried a little.
But Heughan was the headline, not the whole story.
Bagpipers in full regalia led the way up the avenue, steady and loud in the best possible way. Highland dancers hit their marks. A Loch Ness Monster costume wove through the procession, operated by what appeared to be several very committed people. A Scottish Deerhound wore a tartan bandana with complete dignity. The Scottish flag — that brilliant blue and white — was everywhere.
That’s really what Tartan Day is. A bunch of people who are proud to be Scottish, or proud to know someone Scottish, or just happy to be outside on a perfect April afternoon, all crowded together on a Manhattan sidewalk. It doesn’t need to be more complicated than that.
It was a good day.
