How Cool Is That?

Here is a little of everything: pot pourri, as Alex would say.  

A lot of different activities, but all with one theme:

First, I spent a couple of days in Crystal City at my bosses'  office.  It turns out that my niece, Jenna, works about a block away from our offices.  How cool is that?  

We had a very pleasant lunch, which we will repeat often.

Later in the week we went to Baltimore Avenue's Dollar Walk.  Baltimore Ave is very eclectic, with a lot of interesting people.  It is what I imagine South Street was before it began trying so hard. (See previous blog)

 

Dollar Walk is where each of the local merchants find something on their menu and sell it off a table on the street for a buck.  Here is Desi's Indian selling a potato pastry thing, and some yummy mango custard.

Our modus operandi was to find the longest lines and get in them.  The food was correspondingly delectable.  The spring rolls at Vientaine were out of this world, after a 50-yard line.  

Of course, there was music.  Here is a jazz-rock combo that had a really chill bass and drum riff that everyone else played off.  The guy on the right was playing a sort of synthesized sax-o-ma-phone. 

This interesting duo was proud of the fact they had avoided their mary-ju-ana songs in their family-friendly set for the evening.

And I don't know exactly what these flying saucers were.  They sounded a bit like metal drums, but under water.

And this guy had a drum machine and a synthesizer and sounded like an ensemble of six.  

 

He was good, but he made me wistful for the true one-man-band.

Here is Mr. Magic, whose act came straight from the box under his table of "125 Magic Tricks to Amaze Your Friends,"  but he still got me with the cigarette in the handkerchief trick.  How cool is that?  Plus he was gamely working the crowd waiting for the heavenly spring rolls.

Finally, in a hat tip to my sister who encourages this sort of thing when not actually participating in it:  a yarn bombing right here in River City!  Yes, that 3-inch steel pipe set in tons o' concrete, that most ubiquitous of unmovable urban landscape features has a knitted woolen cover.  In the summer!

 

And here is our local water ice (Slushee-esque summer coolers) purveyor.  His face says what he has to be thinking:  "How cool is that?"

On the weekend, we went out to Lancaster to meet up with Lynne and Kit at an arts and crafts fair.  (They camped the night before.)  We drove through a number of quintessential small towns to get there.  

Everything is classier in a small town.

This 24-year-old fair had all of the hallmarks of greatness:  it had your wandering pipes and drum band.

It had your demonstrating artists, including a fascinating make-your-own-silk-scarf-pattern that I completely forget to photograph.

It had your BBQ stands, "Mr Bill's Grill,"

It had your local patrons of the arts. 

(Okay, Lynne and Kit from Weehawken)

We were on a safari of sorts.  Our apartment walls are still in need of decoration befitting our Pennsylvania adventure.  We ended up with this double panel from a PA restaurant tin ceiling.  Nice clean pattern, original paint--unmarred by the fire that did in the restaurant--and a nicely crafted mahogany frame.  For scale, the tag dangling off the frame is a standard business card.

Also, we picked up a Pennsylvania classic: a redware dish.  It looks like the doiley is baked right in, but that's the fired pattern. It will adorn our breakfast nook.  How cool is that?

One other item on our safari list we didn't get to check off was light switch plate covers.  Ours are painted into the wall and we were hoping for something wild and unexpected.

We'll have to wait until the next craft show.  But that means we still have an excuse to keep going to craft shows.  How cool is that?