St. Patrick's Day Parade in Hoboken Is Canceled There will not be a St. Patrick's Day parade in Hoboken, N.J., this year, but organizers say they may go elsewhere to march. The private committee that organizes the parade canceled the 1.1-mile-long march because the mayor, Dawn Zimmer, wanted it held on a weekday, not a Saturday. It had been planned for March 3. Last year the police arrested 34 people after the parade, and two women told the authorities that they were sexually assaulted. Many of the charges involved punching police officers. Some involved vandalism - breaking a screen window with a bat, for example. In another instance, partiers on a balcony threw a flower pot on firefighters answering a call about a backyard blaze. Mayor Zimmer said one woman noted that a frustrated partygoer smashed the door of her building when he could not get in. "She said it had survived the riots in Hoboken decades ago, but it did not survive Hoboken St. Patrick's Day," Ms. Zimmer said. The aftermath of the parade has been a disaster. It was out of hand. For 25 years, the parade stepped off on the first Saturday in March, a day the parade organizers settled on to accommodate bagpipers and bands with other commitments closer to March 17. Bill Coughlin, a spokesman for the parade committee, said the performers would be unavailable on a weekday. "The vast majority, these are people with regular jobs" who take time off only for the St. Patrick's Day parade in Manhattan, he said. He said the parade committee tried to negotiate with the city. "Our take is, we are not responsible for what happens before or after the parade elsewhere in the city," he said. The mayor countered that "they have to understand the parade brings people in from all over." "The city is dealing with the aftermath," she said. We try as hard as we can. Every single police officer we can, we have on duty - officers from the Port Authority, from N.J. Transit, the sheriff's office, other municipalities. We're a small town. We cannot handle the security measures that need to be in place. Some business owners said the parade had become a losing proposition. "For the bars and restaurants and things, it's O.K. for them, but not for us," said Patrick Jarkowsky, the manager of Tunes, a record store on the parade route. It's a business killer for us. No one who normally comes to our store wants to come. There's fighting, people passing out on the streets, and everyone wants to use our bathroom, and they get belligerent when we don't let them. It's just a mess for us. Juan Melli, a mayoral aide, said the parade last year cost the city $150,000 for additional police officers and sanitation workers. Days after the parade, the mayor, who had marched in previous ones, told the committee that the event would have to move to a Wednesday "to protect our community." The committee, in a letter posted Friday on its Web site, dismissed that idea. "The idea of marching in a parade, in the dark, on a weeknight, is as insulting as it is unreasonable," the letter said. The letter did not mention Ms. Zimmer by name, but several lines appeared to be directed at her. It said the committee had decided "not to continue to negotiate over the heavy-handedness of one person." It also said, "Evidently, there are some elected officials elsewhere in the state who have figured out how to protect their residents during ethnic, religious and other community celebrations." The letter said the committee was considering "invitations we have received from other communities throughout the state of New Jersey to march in their celebrations of Irish heritage." Mr. Coughlin said at least one was planned for the day the Hoboken parade was to have taken place. Ms. Zimmer said that even without a parade, Hoboken would have a full police contingent on duty on March 3. "I don't know whether we'll have people coming in," she said, adding, "I don't believe we'll have the same problems, but better to be safe than sorry."