This being the July 4 weekend, no doubt your burg has its own Independence Day celebrations of which to partake. (For readers who aren’t Canadian or another nationality, that is.) Here, the party now falls under this rubric. In past years, Fair St. Louis has taken place at the riverfront grounds near and including the Gateway Arch. However, because of renovations there, in anticipation of the 50th anniversary next year of the Arch, the Fair was moved here for this year, this weekend.
Given this move, you can imagine the concern for how well Forest Park would stand up to the hordes of pedestrian traffic in the park, never mind parking in the surrounding neighborhoods. Self decided to check out the fair briefly (alone, of course – 3CM is a loser, after all), albeit not specifically for such civic considerations. Namely, he went because…..
…..the featured act last night was this perfomer, whom 3CM had never seen live. If the Fair had been at the Arch grounds, getting kind of close-ish to the stage would have been difficult, at best. In Forest Park, I settled for a spot halfway up Art Hill from the stage, which wasn’t too bad. I could see the big screens that gave selected views of the musicians, as well as see BR in “real space” even from that distance, which was good enough. Of course, there’s always the risk of people in front standing up and obscuring the view of the stage, which one couple did, rather obliviously, for a few songs. Finally, they did sort of figure it out and sat down. (Sample video of the evening is here, but it's more a capture of her on one of the big screens, rather than herself directly.)
BR and her band put on a pretty good show, for just under an hour and a half. They started on time, so the Fair STL folks were really good at keeping the day’s proceedings on schedule. The ‘official’ set ended about 9:40, but they had plenty of encores up their sleeve, so that their set ended just before 10 PM, when the fireworks were set to go off. She played the two songs of hers that even I recognized, not realizing that they were hers, of course, as well as a nice mix of other items. BR even put in a nice word for City Museum (and riding the multi-floor level slides there), as well as bicycling through Forest Park.
The fireworks likewise went off on schedule, a good show in their own right, in sort of the intuitively ‘standard’ set that fireworks display tend to follow. It’s hard to explain in words that last sentence, in fairness. What I mean is that the sequence tends to include several of certain types of fireworks, like the ones that make a smiley face, twirlers, the fireworks where you get two rounds of bursts or spiraling sparklers, and so on. Fortunately, in terms of a good view of the fireworks, I had started to walk in the direction out of the park, but down ‘front’ near the basin and due west. I was in front of a service cart near the basin when the fireworks started, and just parked myself there for the visual show. Fortunately, the music selections did not include the worst, most mean-spirited nationalistic (not patriotic) song imaginable for July 4 (no need to mention names or title; you can all guess it), although someone was waggish enough to slip in a portion of The Boss' "Born In The U.S.A.", not to mention a bit of Leonard Bernstein's "America" from West Side Story and the last part of Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture at the end.
On the whole, the folks there behaved pretty well, in terms of orderly strolling along the grounds. The biggest disappointment on the part of the populace was that too many aluminum cans, plastic bottles, and #1 plastic cups wound up in the trash, rather than the recycling containers that were set out for the recyclables. On the good side, it was nice to see quite a few bicycles at the Trailnet ‘bike park’, either self-parking or valet (for tips) available. I didn’t stay to see how many people were walking to the MetroLink stops near the park, although a good number seemed to be going that way. Either that, or they were walking to the Washington University parking lots roughly kitty corner (meow) from Forest Park.
Tonight is the last night of the fair, but having had my fill last night, 3CM is being his loserly self, in addition to being somewhat tired, and giving it a miss. It would be nice, though, if the music folks at Fair STL have the wit to put in Chicago's "Saturday In The Park" among the music choices. I won't know, of course. So, overall, it's OK for other folks to stop by and take in the fun, since I've had my share.
With that, Happy Independence Day weekend, and time for the usual SNLC protocol, namely your loser stories for the week.....