Yesterday, I met with some friends at the Louisville Street Faire (here in Colorado, we pronounce the “s” in Louisville, because we are not Kentuckians) for talking, drinking, and live music. The fair happens each Friday through the summer with a different live band each week. While dancing around to a southern-rock band that had a very slight touch of country thrown in, it occurred to me that I've lived here long enough that I consider myself to be a bit of a local. I know about the local little events in the various towns I've lived in, as opposed to only knowing the huge tourist events, even though it's been a few years since I lived in Louisville.
The Street Faire is full of vendor tents, weak margaritas, overly-tanned women in short shorts and Birkenstocks, and men wearing Hawaiian shirts and cowboy hats. I'm always secretly amused by cowboy hats because Colorado does still have a streak of “westerner” going on while wearing Birkenstocks. I guess I think of most Coloradoans as a Cowboy-Hippie hybrid...which means most of them look like normal people who wear strange accessories from time to time, depending on where they are on the Cowboy-Hippie spectrum.
There was the stereotypical “Yee-HAW!” from various parts of the audience whenever the band started a new song, which also greatly added to my amusement. This happened even when the band played Grateful Dead covers. Yee-haw, indeed! In spite of all this, people were very much enjoying themselves, as opposed to the self-conscious enjoyment that can happen in a bigger city when folks go to “one of those quaint little festivals.”
And as a large of chunk of Louisville was out together drinking margaritas, dancing (some even swing dancing) to loud music in the open air, I was reminded that sometimes community events actually do build a sense of belonging, even if it involves cowboy hats.
An Erinku:
lounging
on couch
putting off
paper writing
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