Awesome Day Seventeen: Street Festivals and a Fish Platter

Street festivals are always cool.  Music festivals are equally rad.  Music and street festivals in my neighborhood, however, are just downright Awesome.  (Especially when they are free--and you all know how I feel about free things.)

We're talking walking distance, guys, walking distance to numerous live bands, vendors, and a beer garden.   Awesome Day Seventeen was looking good.

The festival was Echo Park Rising, a festival in its third year, meant to keep music and fun affordable for all.  It highlights my favorite neighborhood in LA.  Echo Park is Awesome.  Yes, it's full of hipsters, but it's also full of culture, music, street art, staircases, dive bars, and really good tacos.  Plus, I've decided that hipsters aren't really all that bad.  I practically am one, except that I have a job to pay my rent (and not my parents) and usually don't spend hours making my full-of-effort, ultra-expensive outfit look thirft-store and effortless.

But still.

I like festivals for a couple reasons.  First, obviously, is the community vibe.  I like anything that brings together otherwise strangers in a common pursuit of music or art or farmed goods or culture.  Second, festivals transform spaces from desolate, ordinary places into something extraordinary.  Driving streets become pedestrian-dominated, desert fills up with state-of-the-art sound equipment, parks turn into outdoor art galleries and food courts.  You can drink booze in places you would otherwise get arrested.  You can romp and wear fun clothes and eat street food--and in LA street food means food trucks, and I really love food trucks.

There also usually a lot of fun things to buy.  This particular festival was full of vintage clothes and artwork.  I like both those things.  We bought this (Awesome) fish platter--or as it was described on the tag, "A Fishy Fishy Fishy Fish Platter":

I can't claim that I knew most of the bands playing (again, I'm a sad excuse for a hipster), but we did catch Chicano Batman, a local LA band that totally rocks.  I've seen them a few times; they are always solid.  Everyone else was pretty great too.  That's the great thing about LA: free music is almost always Awesome.  There is a lot of talent in this city.

Awesome Day Seventeen got cut off a little early by work.  On a Saturday.  Unfortunately, this is life, but just because it's a work day doesn't mean it can't be Awesome.

In Other Awesome News:  Let's note the Awesomeness that is happening to protest the anti-gay laws in Russia, especially with the Olympics looming around the corner.  Personally, I think we should boycott the whole deal.  I'm over this anti-gay bullshit, and people acting like it's even remotely okay.  But I love this story about the Russian athletes proving a point.