Yar, Matey!
Boy, I guess I’m a bad blogger – it’s been a whole week since my last post.
We had a bit of fun for Pookie’s birthday this year – as a happy coincidence, we had the Pirate Festival to attend down at Cathedral Park. This turns out to be a pretty decent place to hold an event of this size. The space is pretty open, so at first glance you’re thinking there will be no shade – there are hardly any trees. Then you remember that you’re directly under the St. Johns bridge, which happens to run East-West, Leaving a 40-foor wide swath of shadow right down the middle of the park.
On hand was an actual sailing ship and many, many, many people dressed as pirates. I had no idea there were that many in the area. Sure, the SCA has drifted toward pirates lately, but this was a bit surprising.
Good points included some good music, dancing and plain ol’ fun. A bunch of those inflatable bouncy places for the kids to tromp on, face painting and other child-friendly delights. For the adults, there was an “Ale Garden”, and most of the music was more adult-oriented.
Bad points included a lack of easy public transport combined with lousy parking, a $15 cover charge and long lines for everything. I mean hour-long lines. It seems that not a single food vendor had any idea how to staff an event like this, and they were taking forever to get anything served.
They are saying next year they will extend it to two days, which will be good – give them more time to make a profit, maybe they can lower the cover charge. In 3 year’s time, the event may grow large enough to be held down at Waterfront park.
September 26th, 2006 at 12:34 am
Thanks fer yer kind words and ruminations,mate. Ye make our black hearts swell with pride, ye do. As one of the organizers of this here purveyance on piratical attitude, I can be assurin’ ye that next year there will be much more accomodations in the realms of grub and grog, as well as events and fun for even the ‘tweeners, to be sure. As a first year event, even though our intentions were the best for all involved, perhaps even we did not anticipate the arrival of over 9000 buccaneers at once.. argh! Next year, ye should be keepin’ a weather eye out for more space, more tall ships *no promises, now, but we be sendin’ signals already to the west coast bretheren to be bolsterin’ our fleet* as well as even more grub and grog. Sure, and we be settin’ our sights on keepin’ the lines down and the spirits up, says I.
Captain Splinter McCormick
*Steven Black*
Brotherhood of Oceanic Mercenaries
(www.boompirates.com)
Steering Committee
2nd Annual Portland Pirate Festival