FOOD FAIRE

I must start with yet another expression of guilt. I assumed that today would be quiet so I planned to write my first political analysis of my recent visit to 3 military history museums. In preparation I listened to several hours of Alan Dershowitz’ book The Case for Peace and spent some time thinking about the plight of the dispossessed on both sides of the war. As I sat down to my laptop at about 7:30 p.m., I caught a reference on the news to a Food Faire in a nearby park. Since I hadn’t eaten, I thought I would saunter over, grab a bite and return to my best (and only friend) my blog. After walking for about 45 minutes (I misjudged the distance) through an almost deserted park, I turned the corner and was overwhelmed by the spectacle before me.

I’ll let the captions on my photos tell the rest of the story, but here are the simple facts. The area set aside for the faire was about a quarter of a mile square and when I got there it must have held about 5,000 people, almost all of whom were under 30 and as I’ve mentioned before about 3 to 1 single women. In the center of the square were four stages each with a band playing full blast. One side was all meat serving booths, another was just pastas, rice and lentil dishes, the third was ice cream and deserts and the fourth drinks, including fresh fruit juice, some beer, and soda. I did a full walk around, about 125 booths, passed on all the skewers of meat and weird stuff I couldn't identify, had a large dish of pesto pasta, had a huge dish of cherry ice cream with fresh cherries and finished it off with a Pepsi MAX. Total cost about $15, not cheap, but not expensive either.

I don't know if this photo can captures the size and intensity of the crowd, it's the best I could do with my cell phone camera, the only one I use.

It was about 10pm and I was really tired so I leaned up against a light pole and just stood there in front of one of the music speakers for an hour. I folded my arms like a plain clothes security guard, put an earphone from my MP3 player in my ear to make it seem like I was receiving my instructions from headquarters and then just stared menacingly (as opposed to lecherously) at all the party goers. By 11pm the crowd had easily tripled in size and there must have been at least 15,000 kids, everyone eating and drinking something and gyrating to the music. Again, I’m going to try to contain my ethnocentrism, but except for the tight security getting into the fair, there was not a policeperson or solider anywhere to be seen. There were hundreds of trash cans and a minimum of litter and NO BATHROOMS!! About 25% of the crowd seemed to be on their cell phones at all times. Except for me, there seemed to be almost no adult supervision, so you can imagine the amount of responsibility I felt on my shoulders; good thing they were broad enough to handle it. There was no smell of pot or people acting drunk. Incredibly, I did not see "hooliganism" of any kind, this was definitely not a British soccer tailgate party. Finally my Pepsi MAX kicked in and I had the energy to leave my light pole (which to my relief did not fall over in my absence) and mercifully found a bus that took me back to my apartment around 12:30p.m. It’s hard to believe but this was the first night of the faire and it will continue all week. Honestly, I have been to many Renaissance Faires and even the Gourmet Food Show at the Moscone Center in S.F., but I have never seen anything like this before. Again, my apologies to my Palestinian brothers and sisters whose story will once again be put on the back burner of my blog.

There were at least 3 crepe stands with 20 griddles each, here a woman is making two crepes and spreading Nutella on them.

Rows and rows of spaghetti and pasta as well as strawberry shortcakes ready for whip cream.

Four really cute female drummers doing that Japanese Taiko drummming thing with lots and lots of energy and volume. May take a moment to load, hit the play arrow button in the middle and or lower left corner.