My neighborhood has two street festivals every year: HonFest in June and Hampdenfest in September. Although HonFest is much bigger and more well known, Hampdenfest is by far my favorite of the two. I like the fact that it is more low key and really about the neighhborhood businesses and organizations. I missed Hampdenfest last year because I was out of town for a wedding. I was very sad about it, especially as Future Islands played. I was happy to be back this year though.
As with any good street festival there were lots of food options. I went out and wandered around checking out all the booths for awhile. I didn’t buy anything, but did get some lunch and some kettle corn to eat while I watched The Ginger Blossoms perform. They are an all red-headed Gin Blossoms cover band fronted by women. The fact that the vocalists are female gives the songs a little bit of a twist, but other than that they’re just a straight out cover band. I very much enjoyed listening to them. I wasn’t a huge fan of mid to late 90s and early 00s rock. Those were my high school and college years and I’m given to understand that means I should have fond memories of the music of that time and be nostalgic about it. I really do not though. Despite my general apathy towards that music, I really did like the Gin Blossoms at the time and owned some of their CDs. I had kind of forgotten how many songs of theirs I liked until I heard them all played yesterday. It was a fun stroll down memory lane.
I ended out the day watching the toilet bowl races. Think soap box derby except that all the vehicles look different and somehow have to incorporate a toilet into them. It’s always an enjoyable event and people can come up with some pretty impressive vehicles. I was kind of annoyed that they didn’t do all the safety practice runs until the advertised even start time. Next year they should really do that beforehand. We spent an hour waiting around for the actual races to start and thus wound up leaving before the end because we didn’t want to keep hanging around out in the hot sun that long.
As usual it was a fun day. I look forward to next year’s.
More Than Meh 