Party weekend in my town

It's party time!!!!!!!!

Yesterday we had our annual Carribean carnival - dancing in the streets and a party in the park. Winding up your waist in the sunshine.

Today we have the annual Asian mela - another big party in the park with music and dancing.

A wonderful way to celebrate the different cultures in our small town on the edge of the Pennines. Everyone coming together to enjoy themselves. It is lovely to see everyone smiling and laughing and dancing and sharing happiness.

Do you have similar events in your home town(s)?

I LOVE Asian festivals. The noise, colour smells are so vivid and exciting.

We have quite a strong Asian community in Reading, but I don't think they have any festivals - not that I know of anyway.

The West Indian community starts a couple of roads away from me. Again - neer seen them having any kind of carnival. However, I adore the Notting Hill Carnival - used to go to that lots.

Reading has the WaterFest. We have the Rivers Thames and Kennet plus the Kennet and Avon Canal running through the centre of the town. Every year in July we have stuff going down on the rivers. It's largely for kids - and although I've walked past it all, I've never taken part.

Also - we have WOMAD which is the World Music festival - acts from all corners of the world descend - as well as most of the hippy generation. But the music is great and the atmosphere in the town is always so relaxed when that's on.

The one BIG event we do have is the Reading festival. This is a mini-Glastonbury. Thousands upon Thousands of music fans converge on the town - pitch their tents - and divest our cash point machines of money at the end of August!!!

Seriously - you can actually here it quite well from my back garden, and the whole town is really jumpin'. Again, a great, chilled-out
mood arrives. The oldies hate it (loud + people with multicoloured hair), and so do Reading's resident yobs (they hate anyone that does't sport football terrace 'uniform').

But the rest of us LOVE it.

I grew up near a town that had a less than charming little event called the "Chittlin' Strut." It smelled SO bad for miles. It was mostly a drunkfest. The "Possum Trot" a few weeks later was a little more sedate. Gee, I wonder why the rest of the country thinks the South is a little strange! :laughing:

We have a lot of festivals, cultural or otherwise, in Cleveland. Next week is the Irish Heritage Festival. There is a greek festival, and the Feast of the Assumption in Little Italy. University Circle has its Circle Fest. There are always lots of things happening downtown-KidsFest, BrewFest, Rib Cookoff, etc. I guess that's the benefit of living near a decent-sized city.

Krazy - what is a chittlin? And how does it strut?

This weekend has been great. I only live about 5 mins away from the park where all the action is (handy) and the weather this weekend has been the best this year - blue skies, warm breezes etc.

We have loads of events in this town and the surrounding villages - an annual duck race (plastic and yellow), a giant pie cooking weekend (they made the biggest one ever this year) and the canal festival in a few weeks - they have recently restored the canal that runs through the town, but it keeps running out of water at the highest bit (it is funny seeing barges stranded - he he). The only problem with these festivals is that it does tend to bring Morris Dancers out of the woodwork (pagan fertility rites - lots of hankie waving and being bashed over the head with an inflated pig's stomach).

The best one ever was a few years ago, when the town hosted the international market festival - hundreds of market stall holders from across Europe, selling bulbs and flowers from Holland, cheeses from France, olives from Italy, sausages from Germany etc etc, plus lots of street entertainment. An amazing weekend.

Toronto has way to many cultural events to name them all. The few prominant ones are Caribana and the Gay Pride week parade (3rd largest n the world).

It is actually a chitterling, a hog intestine. YUMMY, huh? As for the strutting, who knows? They are either stump slung,(cleaned out by beating them against a stump to remove contents) or boiled clean. Most people swear by stump slung chittlins. I swear, I'm not kidding!

And these are meant to be eaten? Are they stuffed or just eaten au naturelle?

Yes, apparently people eat them. Boiled, deepfried, or stuffed, with what, I shudder to think. I could never get one past about a foot in front of my face. They smell terrible! You can buy them in the grocery stores in South Carolina, if you can't make it to the festivities. This little event occurs in November, in Salley, SC, pop. about 47. SAAAAAAALUTE!

Well, I have 2 to post about.

In my actual town of Land O Lakes, we have an annual deal called the Flapjack Festival. There is a carnival, a parade, and both mornings of the weekend a free pancake (flapjack) breakfast. It was started because the company that makes Land O Lakes butter saw that there was a town with the same name as its product and decided to donate all this butter to the town. Somebody decided that a good use of the butter would be on pancakes. Now it's an annual tradition.

In Tampa, the super annual big deal is Gasparilla. This occurs every February. Local people dress up in pirate clothes, and sail into the harbor on pirate ships. Jose Gaspar "takes over" the city. There is a huge parade, with all the pirates throwing beads into the crowd. The celebration gets longer and raunchier every year. It is kind of like Mardi Gras in New Orleans. When I first moved here, it was a one-day thing. The kids even got off school for it. Now the festivities run for more than a week.

Here in Portland we have a ton of things going on during the summer because it is so short. We just got done with 4th of July festivities and the Blues Music festival. Next big thing is the Oregon Brewers Festival, the 1st or 2nd largest beer fest in the USA! In June, we had the Rose Festival. It is a festival that lasts 2 weeks. Navy ships come in for tours, carnival rides, beer (of course), games, etc. It also has the 2nd largest Rose Parade in the nation. The major fairs and festivals are held at the waterfront downtown.

About the beer fest, this will be my 4th year volunteering. I pour beer. It is so fun watching the drunks and the women flashing.

Keith

I miss Kansas City! They have the Blues Festival, Spiritfest and several others all through the year. The Liberty Memorial, where they hold them is so beautiful. It is the only WWI memorial in America.