Denver has two major festivals each year in downtown's Civic Center Park - The People's Fair over the Memorial Day Holiday and The Taste of Colorado over Labor Day Weekend. If you ask me, they are almost completely interchangeable. It is also damn confusing, but that's just me. As usual this year, it is all about food - the streets circling the park are lined with food booths. Most popular are the huge fried turkey legs and corn on the cob soaked in butter on a stick. This is not a health food type of fair by any means. The Screamin' Sicilian was doing box office business, but it wasn't until I looked at the photograph that I saw they were giving away free samples, and I missed it. Every cheapskate's nightmare.
And as usual, they had a ride for children where they would bounce way up in the air and then come back down again, with gleeful parents taking photos of them mid-air. Years from now these same children will be lying on a psychiatrist's couch, of course: "I keep having this recurring nightmare of falling through the air, and wake up screaming. For God's sake help me doctor." The stately Colorado State Capitol stands quietly across the street, as it has since 1894, watching over the action. Back then there was a similar festival around Labor Day called The Festival of Mountain and Plain, but I think they had different ways of torturing their children back then.
Music is a big part of the festival, too. The big acts are in the evening, of course, but other groups play on the various stages throughout the day. The group in the photograph on the left is called The Afters. They are evidently a Christian rock group and they are VERY loud. You could hear them playing throughout the festival. If they were trying to reach heaven with their music, I think they probably succeeded. But hey - I'm a curmudgeon, so what do I know? A hip curmudgeon, but a curmudgeon none the less.
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