Street Festivals Mean Accessibility

You can tell a lot about a town by its street festivals. Well, okay, maybe there are no great lessons to be learned from fried dough, mobs of people, and the occasional arts and crafts, but they sure are fun and promote a sense of community in a town.

Also, street festivals are the ultimate in accessibility for someone who can't go inside places (due to MCS). All of those things you have been craving, like buying prepared food and going into stores to look at things, suddenly come outside! I never fail to get excited over food sold at a festival. It must be an ingrained response learned from my childhood....I sure liked food then, too. :)

Every town I have been to, I have smiled when I saw what they called "fried dough" locally. It seems different in every town. In Maine we always just called it friend dough. But in Maryland it was called something different, Missoula different still..... Although I think "elephant ears" seems to be a popular name....So funny.

There was a stand selling baked potatoes and corn on the cob....Yum....I considered asking if she'd take the corn off the cob for me but then decided to concentrate my energies on gettting to and navigating the BBQ stand. There was lots of ethnic food, pizza, ice cream, usual things.... one place had salmon.....and the BBQ place, man could I go for some good BBQ, I really wanted marinated steak tips but alas they were nowhere to be found. So I settled for some pulled pork instead. Tasted just like my dad's - my dad makes it every summer. And it's actually good - never would eat pork otherwise.

There is an art to navigating that many people. First, you have to want to, pure and simple. There has to be a reason. Second, you move fast. Do not in any circumstance linger - you will get swallowed by the crowd and knocked out by smells. Funny thing is, people don't smell nearly as bad if you're moving by them too fast to get a good whiff. :)

Navigating through a group of people is almost like a game of strategy. You have to be on alert, look ahead and be planning all the time - looking for the gaps and openings, thinking about in what ways you will move your body in order to fit through the ever changing openings that are constantly occuring.

The street of art vendors was boring; in the middle to the right was the street of food vendors and a band or two. Bend does its festivals right and thankfully the music was kept to tolerable levels. Something Missoula did not know how to do. lol. Have I mentioned that before?

To the left was a street of crafty things. None particularly interesting but better than the art.

Continuing down the street, there was a display of much better and more interesting crafty things. I got two magnets with sayings on them, and some baked corn with cinamon that I regretted buying, but oh well. Guy was nice there. His stand was right by the huge Bank of America time and temp sign. Said it was 95 there earlier but only about maybe 78 when I got there and a few degrees less an hour or two later. Poor guy, not only to be hot but to be overinformed about just how hot it is, lol.

Despite regretting the baked corn, it did give me a bit of a sugar high for a few minutes and when "Marakeesh Express" came on the radio, I actually felt like dancing, for a minute, and did so. It is an extremely beyond belief depressing thought to think that the only times I feel truly happy, alive, and good are after consuming food with large amounts of sugar in them. Really depressing, since I am REALLY trying to avoid anything sweet or w/ sugar. Honestly, I do not know how I will live that way, but I think I have to, for the sake of my health. ARGH.

Well whatever. Like I said, street festivals at least give me a feeling of inclusion and being able to participate in a community event, or hell, participate in anything that involves, you know, other people, food, something other than staring at my feet, lol.

Other than having boring music (but thankfully not loud boring music) they did a pretty good job.

Just looked up some Sugarland info and almost lost this blog post. We are seeeing them live and outdoors in two weeks.

Kate