Day 1: Food-a-Palooza!
The Art Fair has landed.
Walking in from the parking structure on the morning of day one, I usually get to see some artsy stuff previews. The hours before opening day are fraught with artists scrambling to get their booths in order before the starting bell. Or maybe they are aiming for before the crush of humanity. Whatever, the point is that I get to see stuff before the rest of y’all Art Fair goers do, which I think is pretty cool. It’s also the only day I ever get to see anything before the streets fill up with people because after today, all the booths will have their hatches battened down tight in the pre-fair A.M. I think the artists must go out to breakfast or do secret morning artist’s things (I’d put money on sleeping), which makes them all stingy on the pre-hours eye goggling. Not today though, I saw ART!
OK, it was really hard to miss the GIANT MOOSE and ELK metal sculpture plopped out on the sidewalk. That fellow what makes the big metal art pieces (the ape and Grillin’ sauhaugin from ’04 and the Grumpy warrior and Shpiiidar from ’03) has moose and elk. Awww, he missed the chance to go with Moose and Squirrel. OK, a ten foot squirrel might have been a bit creepy. I’ll get a pic of them when I have the camera. For now, imagine a life sizes moose and elk done in metal sheet and nails. The elk even has a stainless butt for to flash at people! Hee!
BTW, the fair isn’t even open and the Elk probably has a good head start on the Art Fair “What’s the most expensive thing” Game. It was wearing a $14,000 choker tag. The moose is priceless.
One odd note while walking in on the morning of opening day…why are some artists still setting up? It’s not just one or two that got caught in bad travel conditions but a good chunk of them have nothing out or are just starting with the display set up. I’d say maybe 75% of them were out there scrambling around and about 15% of them didn’t even have their tent set up! Boggled, totally boggled.
Today’s mission was to eat at the Food-a-Palooza (I’ll see if I can get a pic of that for you as well) because the Food-a-Palooza rocks (yo). They cordon off the front and side lawns of the Union (spilling out into that little side plaza thing with the fountain…locals will know what I’m talking about) and cram about 20 different places in there selling eats. Tasty yummy fresh grilled (hot!) or icy cool (oooooo!) eats. Eats that will drive you broke if you had to pay those prices every day but hey. It’s Art Fair. I’m on the side that says “It comes once a year, splurge a little. Besides…FOOD-A-PALOOZA!”
But this year…I don’t know. I wandered around the tents and it seemed like the diversity was cut down quite a bit. I had a choice of Italian sausage, gyros, pizzza, Italian sausage, soup in a bread bowl, Italian sausage, Gyros, Italian sausage, pizza, Italian sausage, Gyros, Mexican and Japanese. I don’t really dig Italian sausage so having it available every five steps wasn’t so much my gig. Gyros have beef and a chicken Gyro just isn’t the same. I settled for something called a Chicken Divine and it was tasty. It was a lot like a chicken Gyro but with different sauce.
I then took a meander through the SU section of Fair and found a couple of cool art bits (which I should remember to get a pic of!), one in glass, one in metal and one in bronze…sorta. Well it was in bronze but I didn’t really care for a lot of the fella’s work. It was lumpy and unanesthetically pleasing to me in a way that usually makes me zip right on by except for one piece. He had this cranky-ass looking lumpy rabbit that made me giggle. The whole bronze demeanor said “Fuck off! If I had a face you could readily identify I’d be able to say that to you face to face but I don’t so I can’t and that pisses me off to no end. So I’ll just sit here all lumpy and bronze and glower at the whole world with my entire BODY because my artist hasn’t seen fit to give me actual differentiated eyes to do that with. Fuckers…EVERYBODY! OFF MY STREET!”
Heh.
Last year at the booniverse: Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz…
Last last year at the booniverse: We also seem to have a sudden infestation of cockroaches and mice now. Coincidence? Correlation? Discuss!
The year before at the booniverse: “You! Artists, Off my planet!”