Salmon Days Are Here Again

Allow me to introduce you to the new definition of fun, the embodiment of good times in the physical, it's a little something I like to call: The Issaquah Salmon Days Festival!

Nothing against the fine town of Issaquah and it's inhabitants, Issaquah seems like a nice place to live and commute into work from, but your Salmon Days Festival blows monkey ass! It sucks a dead camel's balls.

Okay, okay Billy, settle down now, it's not that bad. It's not like watching The Cutting Edge, an affront to all that's holy, but it does seem to take the idea of "festival" to a drab place that it wasn't meant to go to.

The Issaquah Salmon Days Festival included arts and crafts booths lining a closed down street, booths that peddled sort of fancier county fair foods, (onion blossoms and Philly Cheese Steaks, but no deep fried Twinkies), and a Field of Fun.

By the by, Field of Fun was pretty much a misnomer; a field yes, not a lot of fun. There was the stuff for kids like face painting, radar checked fast ball throwing (the high school pitcher looked particularly bad assed and proud of himself, throwing his all, in between a set of six year olds - way to go tiger) and a rock climbing wall (which admittedly is pretty cool for kids). But as I am not yet a father, there was not a lot of fun for me.

By the by, Salmon Days, also pretty much a fucking misnomer. I was expecting to see salmon! Salmon steaks, and smoked salmon, salmon gum, salmon top hats and salmon silverware, even salmon colored clothing. The stages where bad local bands played their Beatles covers were named after salmon, and there was a hatchery somewhere that we didn't find, and I saw two people carry a fake salmon over them like one of those Chinese New Year's dragons, all the while banging on a cowbell (to Saturday Night by the Bay City Rollers), but not nearly the salmon-rama I was expecting.

All right tough guy, what would have made it better I bet you're asking. Well, let me tell you. Rides would have made it better. Cheesy carny rides like The Octopus and the Tilt-A-Whirl would have made it better. Anything else? Oh yeah, some fucking booze! What sort of demented freak puts on a street festival without one beer tent? Who does that?

And I should have stated this in the beginning probably, but I tend to really hate these street fair/festivals. The only thing that allowed me to make it through the Haight Street Fair every year was to get good and drunk on Magnolia's Jubilee Ale, made especially for the occasion.

I don't mean to disparage the salmon in any way, welcome back mighty salmon, spawn like porn stars, but unless you are into corn dogs and watching children throw an irrational fit when their Dora the Explorer balloons fights loose the tethers of gravity, then there is not a lot to the Salmon Days Festival I can recommend.


2 for Tuesday Rocktober songs of the day: See No Evil by Television, followed closely on the heels by Alex Chilton by The Replacements.