Street fairs and summer go together like
60 Minutes and the employed aged, but I'd never lived three doors from one until I moved to Park Slope. In D.C., I worked on the block that hosted Adams Morgan Day, and like everyone else who had to deal with the detritus the next day, I thought of it as Adams Morgan Trash-Generation Day and moaned about it. A lot.
It was Brooklyn Pride yesterday, and I had every intention of cheering for my peeps--all I had to do was step outside, walk about 50 yards to the street that it happens on, and yell a bit. Since it's a night parade, I wouldn't even have had to dig out a suitably gay T-shirt. But we had a monster thunderstorm (actually a series of thunderstorms that lasted for four or five hours), and despite having grown up in Manchester and having spent 15 years in Seattle, I really don't care for rain, so I, erm, stayed in and complained when I had to pause an ancient episode of Foyle's War because the brave and no-doubt completely drenched marchers were making a lot of noise as they passed by.
So, there was no way that I could skip "Seventh Heaven," the absurdly named street fare that happens on that same ever-so-close thoroughfare. Still, I figured I'd check out one block, grab some food, and scurry home. Ten minutes and it'd be done. In fact, R and I spent perhaps an hour checking out stalls, finding some bargains, and buying a few things we actually liked. Thanks to those thunderstorms (which returned this morning, much to the chagrin of our upstairs neighbor who was having a stoop sale), the humidity was tolerable.
The highlight, though, was the openness of the high-schoolers who were providing entertainment outside the church opposite T Thai. I heard them perform a pretty good version of "Fantasy" and a very spirited rendition of "The Time Warp," and it looked like they were there for the rest of the afternoon. I can't imagine a group of English high-schoolers standing in front of thousands of passers-by in that spirit--they'd be too afraid of looking uncool or of friends or enemies taking the piss, but I found it quite touching and very American.
Labels: brooklyn, brooklyn pride, gay pride, park slope, seventh avenue, seventh heaven, street fair
