Spirits: Vodka distributor heads south for St. Patrick's Day

What will you be wearing Wednesday, St. Patrick's Day?

Probably a little green. Martin Silver, president of a Syosset-based Star Industries, distributor of Georgi vodka, plans to take the matter of attire one step further - by wearing less. He'll be in a kilt and he'll be trying to play the bagpipe as a member of the Eastern Long Island Police Pipes & Drums Band.

The 40-member band will be traveling a bit further than other such Long Island-based groups. It will be marching - in of all places - Savannah, Ga. Surprising as it may sound, Savannah now boasts of hosting the second-largest St. Patrick's Day parade in the United States, after Manhattan. A spokeswoman for the Savannah St. Patrick's Day Parade Committee said 10,000 people are expected to march in the parade this year. The spokeswoman said many in Ireland fled the potato famine between 1845 and 1852 and settled in Savannah.

Silver and his son-in-law, Garden City attorney Jason Ziegler, joined the band about nine years ago.

"We're the only two Jewish guys in the band," Silver said.

Silver said he is accustomed to wearing a kilt. A few years ago, he was marching in one and had to attend a wedding the same night. He had no time to change. "Tell them the only way I can come is in my kilts," he said he told his wife. And he did.