Festivals help with the denial


The Human Coin
Originally uploaded by V'ron
I've not been blogging, have you noticed? I've been too busy in denial that summer's over. I'm actually embracing autumn, and enjoying the fall color show, but still. There's a few street festivals that have helped me with my denial that any day now, it could snow. (Such is Wisconsin life). First off, a almost a full month ago, was the Bay View Bash. It's reinvigorated this year (maybe it helped to not decided to do it at the last minute, maybe it helped that it didn't rain...) but it was a reason to drag myself out of bed, and go see the Dick Satan Trio riff off a pile of lovely, dangerous surf tunes. (You will note in my post today that I haven't seen a single darn band in a club lately.) They're playing tonight with the Eotics, so If I didn't have child care duties, I'd be there.


My boy, photog in training
Originally uploaded by V'ron.
Soon after them was a set from 1956, who heavied up the fest something fierce. 1956 was always damn heavy, and I think they've gotten heavier: or maybe I normally see them in darkly lit bars where the too-heavy-to-be-just-another-emocore-band sound seems perfect, rather than festivals that tend to rely on happy, peppy bands. As you can see, Sammy grabbed my camera phoneand decided to sharpen his photog skills, and, well, he's actually quite good.
Food is always good at the Bay View Bash: it's probably the bst festival food out there becasue they're the most variety. Yeah, you can get brats and burgers and corn, but you can also get soup and curry and penny candy. And its in a neighborhood where there's plenty of fun kids with fun attitudes.The penny candy seemed to go really well with the final act we saw, Dead Man's Carnival, who were part sideshow, part cabaret, all entertainment.The band backing up the sideshow had this Tom Waits kind of vibe to them, with a sprinkling of mischieveness to them -- the juggling act and the sideshow kept the crowd enthralled. Later, they repeated their antics after sunset, which made the fire juggling all that much more fun.

WOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!
Originally uploaded by V'ron.
A week later, I normally would have hit the wonderful Global Union Festival, but after years of being just spectators, the kids wanted to enter the Center Street Fest Art Cart Races, so they put together the Poke Kart (as in Pokemon) and off they were! The goal was to make it just through the first round, and Stella amazingly squeaked it out. Brian gave her racing tips ("accelerate out of the apex....") and she made it throug the third round. But here's the thing. Stella isn't one for calling attention to herself in big crowds. And she's a perfectionist. By the final race, the crowd was chanting her name (who isn't at least impressed, if not cheering for an 11 year old who's beat out a pile of adults?) and rather than pumping her up, it made her nervous. "Mom, what if I FAIL in front of all these people?" I told her if she didn't want to do it, I'd cover for her ("I've made an ass of myself in front of many of these same people before, and I'm perfectly willing to do so to cover for you again....") but she would have none of it. "No, I WANT to do this," she said, nervously fighting back tears. Here's video somebody shot.... you can see in the last race where she pulled ahead and won it -- she was masterful around those turns. (And not to mention, you can see how delightful -- not unexpectedly so -- the other carts were designed and executed.)
After that kickoff, onto music. I was too busy helping Stella come down from the excitement, and forgot to wander on down by the Uptowner to catch what was, by all acounts, a terrific set from Danny Price and the Loose change, but I did at least manage to catch the lovely country stylings of Tim Cook and the Riverwesterners before catching the adult dodgeball tournament (kids were bumbed out they weren't eligible -- "Haven't you had enough adult-beating championness for one day?") and then watched my dear husband play a set with Dr Chow's Love Medicine. It was a lovely festival overall but the kids were pooped and we had to go before sunset.
Which is a shame for me, because that meant missing a set from a new Steve Whalen band, followed by an increasingly rare appearance from Voot Warnings (with a white jumpsuit-clad Peder Hedman on guitar, which apparently nobody called him on being "Peder Townsend" except Brian as he windmilled his way through the set). But I'm in denial about a lot of things, and it being the full thrust of autumn is one of them.Maybe a picture of Bay View Farmers' Market bounty will hammer it home for me:

More squash, originally uploaded by V'ron.


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