the orange international street fair… you go there for 3 reasons…
1. eat
2. drink
3. dance
labor day weekend we did all three…
ate: aebleskivers (little danish donuts balls with jam & powdered sugar),
fish’n’chips, meat on a stick, many many sausages, kahlua pork sliders and that
was just breakfast.
drank: pretty boring actually, just beer
danced: to traditional greek music in a circle led by a
woman that probably gave birth to a dozen greek babies under a kitchen table,
likely could make you cry with her baklava and outlasted me and a gaggle of
drunken college kids. we also
danced to the rolling stones cover band- the singer may have partied as hard as
mick jagger himself (likely not in as nice of hotels or with as foxy of women)-
his skin resembled apricot fruit leather.
as i walked down italian street i reminisced about the
summer i turned thirteen and hung out at my aunt’s flat overlooking glassell
street. my aunt’s flat, labor day
and street fair was a family tradition every year that always ended with a mass
exodus of friends and family to german street for the chicken dance (singing do
do do do do do do as we imitated chickens flapping our wings (arms), clucking
our beaks (hands) and shaking our tailfeathers (behinds).
auntie deborah’s flat was always packed with her friends ---
painters, policemen, writers, secretaries, students, sculptors, mechanics all
with one thing in common drinking and talking. i would sit sipping frozen lemonade and eavesdropping on adult
conversations. but this summer was
different… i was finally a teenager… my aunt’s friend mark-a writer and
carpenter- let me sip chianti from his mug when my mom wasn’t looking, i was
allowed to go downstairs into the crowd and noise of the fair alone (even if it
was only for 5 minutes to bring back a teriyaki beef on a stick and even though
i found out later my aunt watched me the whole time from her window), and i sat
on the roof with my mom’s friend’s son who was fifteen as he let me take drags
off his cigarette while we had long important talks about who we would be and
what we would do.
almost 18 years later the street fair itself really hasn’t
changed much-the streets are still a mass of drunk, full sweaty people.
my aunt got married and moved and the flats are quieter and
i don’t know anyone who lives there anymore but i still ate beef on a stick and
now i don’t have to sneak the wine.
deanna meets some meat
melissa and natalie get down on some fish'n'chips
introducing the infamous aebleskiver
me & my dad dino in his cool shirt we screenprinted
deanna gets to know to orange police department
sandi & dino make their way through the crowd
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