Bele Chere, mon amour

The last full weekend in July means one thing in Asheville, NC and that one thing is the street fair/festival called Bele Chere. We've been attending Bele Chere on and off for about 10 to 12 years now and we've grown to really like it, provided the weather is not scorchingly hot and dismally humid. Since the weather recently has been neither, we decided to hook up with our friends Todd and Donna and take in this the 30th edition of Bele Chere. While we waited for Todd and Donna to arrive from Knoxville Sparky perused some of the artists booths and I got to see a fabulous show put on by Baton Woman (I have no idea what her real name is). Baton Woman is a gal who is in her mid to late 30's, she's rail thin, and very energetic. I was innocently snapping photos faster than a Japanese tourist when I heard her loud music coming from her portable tape player. Then I turned and I saw her doing a kick ass baton twirling routine. She was tossing that baton high and catching it, smiling and showing off all the while. It was a treat to see her work her baton magic. By the time she finished she was beaming with joy. She smiled and waved to the five or six of us who watched her and I started applauding because she put on one heck of a performance. I tossed a buck and some change in her tip bucket and I told her she was great. You could have powered a small city with the wattage of her smile when she heard me say that.

Our friends Todd and Donna finally showed up and we all started taking in the artsy/craftsy booths, the public service booths, the hippie vendors booths, and of course we suffered through some bad music: This flute guy was playing some serious screeching shitty stuff. I wanted to ask him if he took requests and if he said he did then I was going to request he stop playing but alas I did not. I settled for making snide remarks about his awful musical stylings with my buddy Todd. Speaking of music, we watched this guy with a drum walk up and start to jam with the three other guys. They smiled and let him sit in for about half a song but when he his drumming started to drown out their playing they ran him off.

We walked around for a good couple of hours taking in all that Bele Chere had to offer before we succumbed to hunger. I was perfectly willing to eat the fare from the street food vendors but my companions wanted to go inside where there was air conditioning and have a sit down meal. Thank goodness I followed them into this restaurant. The food was fantastic, I had shrimp and Cajun sausage with a brown gravy over polenta cakes, and despite the surliness of our waitress the whole experience was nice. I'd definitely go back there but not if that cranky gal was my waitress. As the day wore on the temperature went higher and the ones who suffered the most were little fair skinned white kids. In the above picture the woman in the wheel chair was trying to comfort the squirming kid in the stroller but as you can tell he was hatin' on her efforts.
One of the great things about Bele Chere is how community activist organizations use it to spread their messages. PETA has a booth, the ACLU, various conservation groups, and all kinds of political organizations have booths as well. This year I was glad to see that the Obama campaign had booths all over the place and they were registering voters right and left. They also were not content just to sit there so they'd send out people into the crowds to ask if anyone wanted to get registered. I had about three of their people at various times ask me if I was signed up to vote. I looked for Bush McCain backers and Republicans who wanted to get people registered to vote but I found none. How shocking.

On the fashion front, this look was not as popular this year:But the gals who are still using it are still cute as buttons.Thankfully the "wok hat" look was confined to this one gal.

Most of the artsy types had signs up asking people not to take photos of their art and I complied, with a few exceptions. One of the exceptions was this artist who makes metal fish and mermaids. I love this guy's work. When I hit the lottery jackpot I'm going to buy some of his art.

Since I'm back on artists there were a couple of neat performance artists that we got to see.These two little gals, ages probably in the range of 10 to 12, act was to recite song lyrics in unison and then they'd just suddenly freeze and glare at one another. Then after a moment or two they'd start up again in unison. It was kind of unsettling to see them but after watching for a minute or so their act became kind of cool.This chick is one of a cadre of young people who dress up like statues and beat on a drum. They'll stand stock still and then every three minutes or so they'll beat out a rat-a-tat-tat and then freeze again. If you toss them a tip they'll bow as a way to say thanks for your generosity. Some of them, like this chick, do it well and they have great make up and costumes, but some who do this really suck at it.

Of course no outdoor gathering below the Mason Dixon line would be complete without some Christian kill joy trying to ruin everyone else's good time.These pricks stood on a street corner and tried to make the rest of us frightened enough to join them in their delusional religion that's based on fear, obedience to the patriarchy, and death and dismemberment. And they were joined by a couple of asshole who spread the "good news" about how all of us who do not believe as they do are going to burn in hell because we don't take the metaphor of Jesus as seriously as they do. Oh well, some people are never so happy as when they're ruining it for the rest of us.

On the plus side there were some celebrities at Bele Chere this year. New York Times columnist, bestselling author, and Bush administration apologist Thomas Friedman had a booth where he tried to tell anyone who would listen that we need to give the war in Iraq another six months before we even think of pulling out and he also preached about how much we should all love globalization even though it's ruining our economy, our food system, and our lives. As you can see his booth was not well attended at all.

Douchebag Man was also in attendance at this year's Bele Chere. Never heard of Douchebag Man? Aside from his biggest super power, which is being a huge douche, he also has the ability to bore small children and to cause apathy and indifference in adults. Perhaps he was there on behalf of the McCain campaign.
And finally we spotted a member of the Loyal Order of The Water Buffalo dancing to the strains of a Zydeco band, that's him in the fuzzy blue hat. I tried to get a better shot of him but his dance moves made that impossible.

All in all we had a lot of fun at this years Bele Chere and you can see all the other pictures I took over there by clicking here. I'm already looking forward to going to next year's edition of Bele Chere.