hot fun in the springtime

it was blazing when we hit north park for its festival yesterday, but that didn't stop the carnies from putting on quite a show. crazy body contortions and trampoline-launched flying kids had my nephew transfixed, which is a pretty rare occurrence. these were courtesy of the isadora circus arts academy, who came around with offers to go to circus camp after the show, and that sounded pretty appealing to my nephew.



other stage highlights included an astoundingly off-key cover of rilo kiley's "i never" and an overly self-absorbed female songstress who implored to all in attendance that there was more to her than her appearance.

we were fortunate to have bought tickets for the city beat brew festival in advance, which was held at the north end of the larger festival. we walked past the same folks who had been lined up for nearly an hour, and who finally got in when we left about a half hour later. tough to stand in the hot sun that long, especially when you find out your $20 gets you 5 measly urine-cup size tasters. no one seemed to be selling beer either, so drinking your way out of your heat misery wasn't an option either. but there were plenty of good brewers on hand, and we sampled beer from alaska brewery, mission brewery, new belgium, nimbus, and firehouse, which were all good.



on our way back to the car we stopped by vintage religion, where a super-friendly staff even let my nephew use their bathroom for a potty break. lots of cool and kitschy stuff, including a nun chuck gun that launches little plastic nuns up to 15 feet.

the food offerings were pretty standard at the north park festival so we saved our appetites for the sicilian festa in little italy, where jay took what turned out to be a super creepy picture (the poster on the left was for raising china earthquake relief funds):



as we walked by the zagarella food trailer, we heard a shout of "$2 for everything!", which included some hefty meatball sandwiches and big servings of greasy calamari. a perfect topper for the 8 different kinds of beer sloshing around in our stomachs. it more than made up for the quiet atmosphere of the festa as it, and a hot san diego weekend, wound down.