Festival: New Name, New Site, Not Much of Interest

Elvis food at Festival (no longer In the Park) today.

Jacob Seale (12) belted "Up a Lazy River" with Sinatra-like grace and a fine voice.

Jacob has a crush on one of these Miss Mona's dancers, I'd bet ...

... or maybe one of these dancers.

I use old windows like this for some of my own photos (and they sell).

This is Festival's authentic carny look.

OK, Dave, I'll get the doughnuts, you cuff the perp.

Somewhere, they're protesting Monsanto; where are the protesters for this health food?

Dave Schmitzer draws Emma (13) and Olivia (8) Tingle.

Strolling through the crowd at Festival.

That's a bank of portable potties behind this group of eaters.

Little girl looking for her mama through the bouncie window.

Next door, a kite flew in the park.

I don't want to be overly critical of the new Festival (a re-do of the old Festival in the Park), but my brief trip down today led me to one conclusion: It ain't much without its real home downtown. Because of construction in Elmwood Park, where the old Festival grew up over the past 30 or so years, it had to move itself and its new name to the site of the former Victory Stadium in South Roanoke this year and it is worse for the wear.

(I will note here, parenthetically, that it was not wise to simply re-name this festival Festival, since Roanoke has a dozen or so festivals--not necessarily Festivals--to choose from and the first question when you say, "Hey, let's go to Festival," will be "Can you be a little more specific?")

Your favorite editor is a bit worse for the wear, too, forgetting, as he did, to load a disk into his camera with the wide angle lens and taking a bunch of really fine photos that went nowhere, and so neither of us gets to see them.

Here's what we found on a beautiful Sunday afternoon--with a longer lens--and my favorite, I think, was young Jacob Seale's lounge singer version of "Up a Lazy River" on the main stage.

It appeared to me that there were only a fraction of the craftsmen in attendance this year and I can see why. The bad food was in plentiful supply, though. That always seems to be the case.