Boy, I guess I’m a bad blogger – it’s been a whole week since my last post.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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<\/acronym> has drifted toward pirates lately, but this was a bit surprising.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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<\/em> 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"