For me, it started with the mile-long Saturday morning stroll that is the Celebration Parade. For the past few years, we've been a part of the Unique Eugene entry, which is always lots of fun. This time I had 10 Marketeers along for the walk! It was great to be so well represented. Thanks to the Karen Nunley and the Holy Donut gang, Bill Allord, Shane Schaeffer, Autumn Breeze Sanger and Mary Hebert for coming along. We also had the beautiful flower bedecked bikes and riders from Passionflower, a whole bunch of Paul Nicholson impersonators from Paul's Bicycle Way of Life, kids wearing giant paint pallettes from Oregon Art Supply, remote control vehicles of all kinds from Eugene Toy and Hobby, a variety of walking fruits and veggies from Sundance, and the best band in the history of parades, the Pacific Winds band riding in pedicabs. Plus the biggest green balloons ever. Here's the Market gang:
As soon as I got back from the parade, it was full on showtime for the rest of the day. I don't think I even stepped away from the stage until late in the day. Of course I do my best to make the stage extra festive for the weekend with a little extra musical whiplash/culture shock thrown in for good measure. Beth Rose put on one of her great Youth Music Showcases, starring students of Scotty Perey, to a completely packed house. The Swinging Marmalukes swinging covers of unexpected tunes (Led Zeppelin on ukulele, mandolin and bass anyone?) and Americanistan with their middle eastern dancers were great. My fave of the day, though, was Calango. Energetic, joyous Brazilian dance music on a breezy late summer afternoon had everybody up and dancing and celebrating in a most Eugenie way.
The Touchy Feeliacs and Vibe Nation rounded out the long day. My reward for the long Celebration Saturday is always seeing the place all lit up in the evening with folks hanging out and enjoying themselves. Again, much more rewarding when it's not raining!
More musical variety on Sunday, as we started with Acoustic Etouffee swamp stomp style music, then Accordions Anonymous and their delicious mix of polka, tango, folk, rock and whatever else they cook up. The day ended up with Planet Loop, which was great, but my highlight of Sunday was the set before theirs - Kef, a Balkan music ensemble that is just amazing to me. It sounds so complicated, and yet they seem to play it so effortlessly...
It's also nice to have company around the blocks, as the Sustainability (or sometimes Community) Causeway wraps around us in the Park Streets for the weekend:
And on Sunday on the West block this interesting and informative display about solar energy:
So, all in all, if it's gotta be a long weekend, it might as well be a dreamy one! I had fun, hope you did too... If you haven't had enough, you can have a look at all my pix from the weekend here on Flickr
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