OK, I know this is a week late, but I did promise to do a follow-up on the Morgan Hill Mushroom Festival and Mardi Gras.

I am not sure where the Mardi Gras part came from, as there was none of the decadence that is found in
New Orleans, and the food was far from Cajun.

That said, the food was quite good, and the size of the festival was just right. It was more home-spun, with mostly locals coming to the festival, though many people drove from Monterey, San Francisco and San Jose, as the freeway was busy in each direction.

I made a comparison to the Gilroy Garlic Festival in my last post, and while they are quite different in size and content, the premise is the same: Good food and a variety of vendors.

My issue with the Gilroy Garlic Festival is having to pay an admission fee to buy Street Fair-priced food. Sure there are garlic fries and garlic ice cream, but you have to park in a dusty field, walk a half-mile along a dusty trail to pay your way in, and then walk around as you bake, on another dusty field.

My preference is a street fair, but that is just me. Certainly there are 100,000 people who don’t agree with me and patronize the GGF - as the admission fees do benefit various charities. Now, don’t get me wrong, I am all for donations and charities and good causes - but I’ll send in my $10 and then head up to the Los Altos Art & Wine Festival or the Castro Street Fair. It’s pretty much the vendors who do the street fair circuit, moving their booth every weekend to another venue - and in many cases, the local restaurants serving up their goodies.

This is the street fair season, and a there is one just about every weekend if you are fortunate enough to live in a large and diverse metropolitan area.

San Francisco has everything from the yuppie Union Street Fair to the Fillmore Street Fair that has a jazz flavor; to the Haight Street Fair…which is somewhat self-explanatory! And of course we cannot forget the Folsom Street Fair, which if you’ve never attended, let’s just say it is not for the meek, prude or shy!

Summer is here, so let’s enjoy!

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 3rd, 2007 at 1:55 am and is filed under Gay Community Interest. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.