Monday, August 27, 2007

Blasé Feelings at Bham Fest

Hot. Late afternoon. My son and I arrived at the Buckingham Festival late Sunday, after 4 p.m. I had to deliver family to Thurgood Marshall (BWI) Airport, so I was beyond fashionably late to the party, which started at 1.


I went with my son who’s 5. I may just be “faired-out” or maybe I am just ready for the school year to start, to get more structure back into the day—I don’t know—but this year’s fest felt dead to me. I write this knowing full well that many people worked very hard on this, and that I missed the first three hours of the party when I may have seen dancers from someplace like Bolivia.

When I arrived, though, the block of N. Pershing Drive between N. George Mason Drive and N. Glebe Road was, relative to previous years, empty, desolate. A couple hundred people crowded under the gazebo roofs or in the shade of the Glebe Market’s wall. A couple people tried dancing, but it just didn’t take. The county’s Carol Hoover, who helps run the event, told me the street had been much fuller earlier.

For my son, 4 p.m. can be a slow time, a good time to veg in front of a DVD, take a nap or read a book, so the games and face painting did not win his appeal.

We bought a flavored ice of blue raspberry, grape and banana from a small cart that was so close to the stage where a band played, the sound whisked my son’s voice away, and I had to bend close and tell him to look directly at me while he spoke.



We took our flavored ice on a shaded curb near the Popeye’s Chicken and Biscuits, and shared a spoon. The space was empty, despite being shaded. As we ate quietly, I looked at the different tables. Some standards for the festival were there. Bridgeway242, a Ballston-based church, painted faces and made balloon animals. BU-GATA, the neighborhood’s main tenant association, had an information table. The county had an information table. A couple tables were makeshift restaurants with food like roasted chicken. Another was a jewelry store.

I wondered where some others were. Had I missed them where the crowds were thickest, or had they left or never shown up? Where was the Buckingham Community Civic Association this year? Where was AHC Inc. dispensing affordable housing information? Last year a legal services organization set-up a table, where were they?

A good journalist would have worked the crowd, talking to the people (like the couple who set up canvas folding chairs in the middle of the street nearby and held hands while they listened to the music), but I just wasn’t up for it. I really only spoke to Carol Hoover and the woman who sold the ice (business was good, she said).

I didn’t even talk to Pate McCullough or Lois Athey who were working the BU-GATA table. I didn’t re-introduce myself to Charlie and Lora Rinker, long-time housing activists, as they said hello to other people.

The ice tasted sweet, and I don’t get enough time just to sit and be with my son, so eating that ice quietly next to him was the highlight—and a damn fine highlight—of the event for me. The sugar and the cool air refreshed him enough that he wanted to throw the balls to knock over a stuffed animal. He missed all three times, but won a stuffed lizard anyway. (Thank you, event staff, for that.)

We walked then, and I thought of interviewing people, but didn’t. I snapped a few photos. But I think my son was just as happy to walk home a few minutes later, swinging his lizard by the tail.


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// posted by Steve Thurston @ 7:34 AM 4 comments

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