Festival

OK Everybody, Lace up your All-Stars and Polish your Ray-Ban’s, it’s Outdoor Entertainment Time! Free Stuff! Fried Food! Underdressed Fat Guys wearing “No Fat Chicks” T Shirts! Yesssssss!

It’s almost the first weekend in June and if you live here (I don’t know why you’d be reading this site…) you know that it’s time for the Festival of the Arts downtown! Get ready, this is one of the few things Grand Rapids does that is hip so you all better show up and bring your paychecks because you’ll be supporting local non-profits and weirdoes dressed like Hans Brinker and shit. And there’s lots of free music/hula dancing/back-flipping from Grand Rapids talent. And cute dogs wearing bandanas. And you can make fun of the goth kids repercussion free. Sweet.

The Festival of the Arts is a festival where the city celebrates the arts (I know! Right?). It used to be Michigan’s largest volunteer-run festival but because of funding it’s been smaller in the past couple of years thanks to the Man. The Man is always ruining the arts. Boo. Available to you on a variety of stage and pavilion locations are any matter of exhibitions and shows, from first-grader ballet to karate demonstrations to jazz bands to metal acts (usually you have to come in the evenings for those). If you can think of a nationality or group learning event, there is a representation somewhere on stage. Dancing, fighting, rocking, chilling, poetry reciting, acting, not acting, you know, whatever you’re into. Unfortunately no Domestic Problems or Fancy Thermos this year (sucky) but you might get a few of Sam Kenny’s bathtub songs, and maybe Sweet Japonic if we’re lucky. Outdoor concerts are always just a little bit awesomer than indoor ones, and the cultivated mix of decent and shitty bands makes for one interesting time. It goes Friday afternoon through Sunday evening so there’s plenty of room to fit around your busy schedules. Which is lame ‘cause we all know that you don’t have busy schedules anyway. Bring a blanket and enjoy the complimentary Slavic Folk Dancing, Broadway show tunes, and Interpretative Ballet.

Don’t feel like deciding between the +60 country cover band and the GR Women’s Association psychotherapeutic poetry reading? Pull up a curb, dig into a walking taco, and people watch for a while. Free events in general tend to bring ‘em out of the woodwork, but this one has “arts” in the title so it’s mostly just real weirdos (this isn’t hate by the way, me and KP are really weird too). Check out your third grade teacher in a tube top, grinding her hubby to some cover band doing AC/DC songs. See that police officer that just pulled you over getting chili all over his Hawaiian shirt and knee socks. See that standoffish bank teller guy dressed in drag, working his shit in 4” heels. Your doctor verbally abusing his wife. Your mail guy hitting on the Jenison High School marching band. Your bosses’ boss singing “Sweet Home Chicago” in a barbershop quartet. And emo kids. Lots and lots of emo kids. It’s worth the afternoon, no matter how you stack it up.

Then on top of all of these great chances to rock out or not rock out, there’s about 600 booths set up all over the place selling food. There’s TONS of food. All kinds of it. This is where the non-profits get to set up shop and make a few bucks. There are a lot of churches and marching bands and the like, and most of them wear stupid costumes and sell everything from Greek Kebabs to waffle cones to crepes to those strange and gross Scottish Egg things. Most of them are staples served from year to year (your elephant ears, Saigon Sate, pickle-on-a-stick, what have you), sometimes there are lovely newcomers that lack organization, but there is guaranteed something (anything, apparently non-profits are all about getting you fat) for everyone. Sorry, no beer tent but if you just gotta stop all the bars around there will keep appropriate hours you big lush. Maybe you should think about stopping at the AA tent? Maybe bring a flask like a real champ?

But what about the art art you say? There are a couple of tents you can walk through on the Calder plaza where you can purchase almost any portable piece of sculpture, jewelry, blown glass, metal, clay, or painting Grand Rapids can produce. Looking for a sweet windchime or wicked silk scarf? These are the tents to go to. It’s actually worth a trip through if you’re into crafts or “whimsy.” Not too much by the way of actual art (nothing really out there, I mean, the ones that present don’t usually deviate much from the “impulse buy” sector). Also during Festival (and this is the first year with the new GRAM being there, so we’ll check and get back to you) but several places are opened for either free or reduced prices, so you can get cultured right in the face. PS- the GRAM is worth paying the money to see anyway. Walk around a bit outside the Festival limits. Check out downtown, it’s actually pretty nice and local merchants like to bring their A-Game for Festival too. I bet even stupid Kendall College will have some kind of special exhibit going on.

There is always a random good time to be had. For the kiddies and stoners, they open up that big huge tire swing on Calder Plaza and have a massive side-walk-chalk mural, a place where you can make hats and wooden things, and get a rainbow, balloon, Popsicle, or any manner of ambiguously gay symbols painted on your cheek. Still not sounding like your thing? Bring your sign and argue with goth and emo high schoolers from all over the city about Jesus and G-Dub. Watch for MacNaughton Boulevard, La Famiglia, Bless You Boys, and Really Bad British Accents if you’re down for some boss tuneage. Don’t get cotton candy in the neighbor kid’s hair, don’t give one of those Hari Krishna guys money for their books, and don’t fill up on cookies from the blood bus. I tried that once and I think my cookie had a fingernail in it. Probably that’s just good life advice all around, don’t accept food (even cookies) from a bus that’s filled with blood. If you would like a cookie that badly, come see me (Stef) and I’ll get you one, body-part free. You can thank me later.

If you pay the Calvin College student $5 she will give you a henna tattoo on your foot. If you pay the Grand Valley student $5 she will get pissed and tell her boyfriend. If you tell her you have pills, she will blow you in the parking lot behind the courthouse. I’ll see you guys there. Unless you don’t like adventure, then I won’t see you cause you’ll be too busy filling your desperate minds with ideas of false grandeur and getting hooey all over your plastic guitars. Green, yellow yellow red green. So lame. Get your sunscreen and come on out. Come have meat-on-a-stick and hit on a high schooler. It will be awesome, I promise.


SUPER-SPECIAL ADDENDUM: CAKE IS PLAYING AT THE FREDERICK MEIJER GARDENS THURSDAY, MAY 5. I REPEAT, CAKE WILL ACTUALLY BE FURTHER EAST THAN ARIZONA FOR A SPECIAL SHOW AT THE MEIJER GARDENS ON THURSDAY, MAY 5. YOU SHOULD ALL CASH IN ALL YOUR FAVORS, MAYBE EVEN DO SOMETHING YOUR MOTHER WOULDN’T NECESSARILY BE TOO PROUD OF TO GET A TICKET. I CAN GUARANTEE THAT EVEN THOUGH ITS AT THE GARDENS (more about this later) IT WILL BE AWESOME. A W E S O M E. Maybe if this show goes well, the guys from Cake will run into the guys from Gogol Bordello at some excellent event in Austin TX and tell them how rad Grand Rapids is (I know! Right?) and maybe they’ll talk to their manager after a few too many Rolling Rock/Vodka Herrings and maybe play a little showie-show right here in our little hamlet after all. GET OUT THERE!