Elf Sternberg

There are few better reasons to attend Folklife than to people-watch. Where else does the widest array possible of cute, possibly stoned, barely legalness array itself in Seattle, if not Folklife? Okay, Hempfest is probably better-- although given that I could turn around and smell pot being smoked everywhere, and I saw a dude walk right past two cops with a joint in his mouth, and a cute couple of 20-somethings strolled down the main street with garlands of marijuna plants entwined into leis around their necks, Folklife is like a mini Hempfest with better music.

But there is a lot of cuteness. Enjoy!

The weather was supposed to be at its best behaved today, so Omaha and I planned on taking the girls to Folklife, the annual music festival held at Seattle Center. There are actually two festivals, Folklife and Bumbershoot; the first operates on donations, the second is for-pay. They attract different crowds.

We took lisakit with us, as she wanted to go. I dropped everyone off and found parking, and then we all met up and went into together. Omaha gave the Folklife booth a $20 donation, which is what they asked of a family of four. We stopped almost immediately at a band of four teenagers playing fiddle, guitar, banjo, bass and something else, I can't recall what. We stopped and listened to some really good bagpipe music, then went in search of lunch.

The picture was taken while the bagpiper was moving off-stage. It's an okay pano, at least as a tourist shot, but there some obvious pano effects: you can see a little girl on the far left fading out, and on the far right there's a man who appears twice, and a young man who's just walking into reality. Processing the pano was kinda scary: my little laptop's insides shot up to a temperature of 97C while doing it. Both CPU's were running flat out at 100% and the T60 already has notorious heat problems from an overpowered GPU.

Lunch at Folklife is politically correct county fair dining. Elephant ears and funnel cakes nuzzle up to the Tofurkey! All Vegetarian Sausage stand, and the Lebanese, Phillipino, African, South Seas, and what all else food stands that dot the entire park. Omaha and I favor the fire-roasted corn on the cob place where they just dip the whole thing in a vat of butter and hand it to you. Cholesterol city.

We met up with kaelisinger and her lovely family cavorting in the fountain. The fountain is a dome about 30 feet across and 20 high in a cement pit about 150 feet across, and kids absolutely love to play in its pulsing jets. I might have a few photos here in a little bit. I was left with the task of watching over the kids (all four of them now!) cavort while Omaha and Kaeli and the other adults all went to hear something over at the Bagley Wright stage. Kouryou-chan didn't want to get wet, so Lisa took her shopping along one of the merchant rows.

Eventually, we decided to move the party to the wading pool, which was closer to the adults. I made the mistake of leading them not west, which would have made sense, but north, through the thickest part of the crowd. As we passed between the shade trees and the drumming circle, I smelled the overwhelming presence of marijuana, watched a dope deal go down, and saw a few young men and women in a circle lighting up a bowl of some of the greenest tobacco I've ever seen. It's amazing to me how blatant and open the potheads are about this stuff here in Seattle.

I got the girls to the wading pool which, unfortunately, is almost strictly the province of the younger set. No college girls going wild here. Actually, even that doesn't seem to matter. As pretty as everyone around me was, my usual reactions to in just weren't there. It worries me, that I might be getting so old that even the legally cute look too young to me.

The kids spent the entire afternoon staying wet, which probably was for the best as the day turned scorching hot and even with my sunhat on and sunscreen slathering my body I got too much sun and a very low-level sunburn. Omaha became concerned with one little boy who was bullying others and re-arranging the heavy lights under the wading pool (I have a suspicion that it's supposed to be just "a fountain" and not a wading pool, but the festival doesn't dare take it away from parents with overheated children.)

Eventually, though, Kaeli collected her kids, Omaha went in search of security to do something about those lights, and Lisa, I, and the girls went up to listen to Blackamore's Night. That wasn't the plan, actually, it was just what ended up happening. We shopped some more, buying Kouryou-chan a skirt and Yamaraashi-chan a new top, and then caught up with codeamazon and her lovely family.

I was burned out from crowds and I think Shasta just wasn't ready for them, because we hung back on the swath of grass next to one of the theaters and chatted about parenting and dealing with near teenagers and full-scale teenagers. My shoulder started to hurt for no appreciable reason; I don't remember straining it or doing anything damaging, but by the end of the day it was actually swollen and damn near immobile.

We decided it was time for dinner. Omaha took Kouryou-chan and Yamaraashi-chan out to the food drag. I decided to wait until they got back. And that's when the first major disaster struck. I got a call from Omaha saying that she and Kouryou-chan were in the line for Thai food, and that Yamaraashi-chan had gone to the line next door for pizza, and not come back. Even as I'm talking to her, I get a call from a man with a heavy Greek accent telling me that he's found my little girl and she's lost. They tell me where they are.

I ran to them and found her. Obviously, I was very upset, but as much as I was happy to find her, I couldn't believe she'd gotten lost that easily. She apparently walked back to the Thai place, couldn't find Omaha and Kouryou-chan, and so kept right on walking. Even though Omaha and Kouryou-chan were still in line at the Thai stand, she didn't see them. She does stuff like this, and it's one of the reasons Omaha and I worry so much about her. She sometimes shows absolutely zero common sense. She gave the line a cursory look, decided Omaha and Kouryou-chan weren't there, and just kept walking. And she assumes that the universe will somehow bail her out of every crisis, no matter how grave.

Omaha gave her a much better dressing-down than I did about what to do when you get lost at a festival, and I'm glad I made her memorize my phone number. "What did you think?" Omaha asked her.

She shrugged. "I just thought you weren't there anymore."

"We were still in line! Observation skills, kid. Observation skills." That's her other annoying habit, and I think she gets it from me because I do this a lot too. She'll walk into a room, not see what she went in for, and leave, and what she wanted is right there on her dresser, or on the floor, right in plain sight. "What, you think we'd abandon you in a park with a quarter million people?"

"No," Yamaraashi-chan said slowly. "I just thought you'd left."

"Have we ever done anything like that before?"

"Well, no."

"Then what were you thinking?"

"I don't know."

Arrrrgh! She's such a bright and wonderful kid, and yet every once in a while she shows that she's completely unready to go out and face the world. When we got back, it was only Lisa there, lying on the ground, resting. I was a little worried. She looked like she was in pain. She admitted that all the walking was harder than the hiking trip we'd done, but she'd taken some medicine and would get some food and be better soon.

After we'd all gotten food and Joy and Kouryou-chan were fed and wrestling and giggling on the ground, we started to hear sirens. Then more. And then cop cars and an ambulance and two massive fire trucks came into the center. That must have been a nightmare, driving through that crowd.

Omaha learned through her iPhone (yay for Interwebz Everywhere!) that there'd been a shooting at the festival, right around the time Yamaraashi-chan had gotten lost. We all looked at each other for a moment, then she read on. Exactly at the spot where the I'd seen the dopers earlier, and fortunately far, far away from where Yamaraashi-chan and Omaha had gone to get food. The suspect turns out to have a concealed carry license and chose to use his gun to pistol whip someone, and it went off accidentally. What an idiot.

That was pretty much our cue to leave. I went and got the car and drove back to Seattle Center, picked up the family and headed home. We immediately all poured ourselves into our beds, exhausted.