Bagpiper Garry Cheddy flanked by Bloomsday participants.

“June 16 is one day in the life of Leopold Bloom in Dublin and that’s about all I understand,” Kings County District Attorney Charles “Joe” Hynes told The Observer on Saturday at the annual Friendly Sons of Saint Patrick’s (FSOSP) Bloomsday pub crawl.

Two years ago, FSOSP members John Burns, Declan Walsh and Jimmy Ryan decided Brooklyn needed to participate in Bloomsday—an international celebration that takes place on June 16, that date of the often-drunken exploits of Leopold Bloom chronicled by James Joyce in his novel Ulysses.

“We thought, this is preposterous that Brooklyn doesn’t have [a Bloomsday],” said Mr. Ryan. And who better to organize the day of revelry than the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick, a membership group devoted, rather vaguely, to “promoting the spirit of Saint Patrick.”

It was Mr. Ryan who had the idea to get the D.A., conveniently named “Joe Hynes,” involved in the festivities. “I called Joe and I said, ‘We’re reading from Ulysses,’ and he interrupted and said, ‘One of the characters is Joe Hynes, you know.’ I said, ‘That’s why I’m calling.’”

“He said, ‘I read it and I didn’t understand a word of it.’ And I said, ‘Joe, nobody does!’” Mr. Ryan told The Observer.

“One hundred years ago, I was an English lit major and I did quite well until I was asked to read Ulysses,” D.A. Hynes explained. But he didn’t need much convincing to agree to read Joe Hynes's lines in the reenactment of the "Cyclops" scene during the pub crawl.

Pinstriped suits, bowties, reading glasses and thick paperback volumes abounded as FSOSP members and literary aficionados converged over plastic mugs of Guinness. “If you didn’t get a mug, get a mug,” Mr. Walsh announced hospitably to a crowded audience at the first of six stops—the Black Sheep Pub. “Keep the juices flowing.”

A show of hands at the beginning of the day revealed that the majority of attendees had indeed read the book in question, though some perhaps more closely than others. Mr. Ryan explained that once the FSOSP had the idea to start a Bloomsday celebration in Brooklyn, they organized a class to read the book together. While one member estimated that only about seven of the 44 current FSOSPs participated, the day saw no shortage of enthusiasm for Joyce’s text.

“Guys, there’s a slight chance I might cry,” a recent Mount Holyoke grad who just finished her thesis on Ulysses warned her companions. The three friends took a picture to send to their Joyce professor back at school.

Also in attendance were Adrian Hardiman, a justice of the Supreme Court of Ireland and his wife Yvonne Murphy, a judge of the Circuit Court.

After selected readings from the early episodes, a procession of about fifty Joyce enthusiasts hit the streets of Park Slope to march to Union Hall, led by bagpiper Garry Cheddy and with a large Irish flag in tow.

Though one of the few readers who did not adopt an Irish accent for the occasion, D.A. Hynes read Joe Hynes’s monologue admirably, and was met by calls for an encore from a supportive audience.

“Have you returned to the book in recent years?” The Observer asked the D.A. before his performance.

“No, I have not. I have a lot of better things to worry about,” Mr. Hynes responded, laughing. A novelist himself, having published what he describes as a "fact-fiction novel," Triple Homicide, Mr. Hynes told The Observer, “My reading is a lot lighter. I like Grisham, I like a lot of crime novels.” The D.A. is currently finishing up the sequel to his first book.

The Observer headed out after the fourth stop—which included the presentation of a certificate confirming Leopold Bloom, Joyce’s protagonist, as an honorary citizen of Brooklyn, signed by Borough President Marty Markowitz—but the rest of the crew was still going strong. After all, as one seasoned audience member reminded us, the readings get dirtier as the day goes on.

A monster from Where the Wild Things Are in the seat of honor. ("Jacob's Ladder" visible in background.)

A table containing six-packs of Red Stripe and Brooklyn Lager and boxes of animal crackers were free for the visitors who arrived for an evening of singing, noisemaking, and general mischief.

After a quick reading of Where the Wild Things Are, Cantor Joshua Breitzer passed around a box of small wooden mallets and encouraged those rumpusing to play not only the massive “Jacob’s Ladder” instrument/installation currently stationed in the back of the sanctuary but “anything you can hit.” There was much cheering, clapping, and clanking. Young dudes started banging empty water-cooler bottles together, a few drums appeared, and suddenly it was really loud. (Click here to hear a 40-second audio clip of the rumpus.)

Ron Lieber, an organizer of the event, yelled over the racket that he was delighted to learn Sendak was a son of Brooklyn. “Once I realized that, I knew we had to do something, especially when it’s dark and rainy and after bedtime,” he said.

Mr. Lieber woke his daughter Talia, the aforementioned six-year-old, at 10:30 to take her to the event. She wrinkled her nose when we asked if she liked Where the Wild Things Are. “Well, I used to like it,” she said. She prefers Chicken Soup with Rice these days.

Rabbi Andy Bachman, however, was an enthusiastic fan. “Virtually everyone I know posted something on Facebook after hearing of his death. People really feel this loss. And he would have loved this,” he said.

But where are the kids?! “A lot of parents were like, ‘11 PM? Beer?’ But even so, this is a nice bourgeois Park Slope event, and we’ll do something for the kids this weekend, and say Kaddish for [Sendak],” he said.

Also in attendance was Debbie Caponera, the niece of Lynn Caponera, Sendak’s longtime assistant and caretaker who was with him when he died. What would Maurice think of the strange scene in the sanctuary tonight? “He’s definitely watching and enjoying it, and he’s glad people are happy,” Ms. Caponera said.

The evening devolved into a raucous freakout. The young, energetic cantor (who at one point urged attendees to check in on Foursquare) sat down at the piano and hammered out the chords of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” accompanied by a saxophonist, while Rabbi Bachman hollered a sort of beat-poetry version of Sendak’s writing into a microphone.

And then, at midnight, a chocolate cake with “I Will Eat You Up!”—the trademark threat issued by Max in Where the Wild Things Are—written in icing was cut and shared.