Salisbury Festival Saturday in pictures

I'm not Salisbury News (or the Daily Times for that matter) but nonetheless I had my camera yesterday.

Now I saw both these fine news outlets at the Salisbury Fire Department awards ceremony that pretty much began the day's proceedings. So I left the picture-taking and story telling to them, save one comment I would like to make regarding the absence of one Mayor Barrie Parsons Tilghman. Since she was mysteriously "out of town", the honor of representing the city transferred to City Council President Louise Smith, who received a reasonably warm reaction when she was announced. Smith only gave short remarks though which essentially said that the mayor was sorry she missed the event (which I have a tough time believing) and that she (Louise) was pleased to be able to represent the city in her stead.

So I listened to part of the presentation and went off to do some of what I came to do, besides drop off about 3 dozen brownies at the Wicomico County Republican Club's food booth.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: I love to check out old cars. So yesterday the festival had a car show hosted by the Wheels That Heal Car Club along with the Delmarva Late Great Chevys club. Obviously I took a bunch of pictures, mostly for my personal collection. It's because I like having them as screensavers and 640x480 doesn't fill up my screen here. Because of that, if I put these pictures to the size of my format you get this:

But I did get a couple other good pictures at the car show that I thought were suitable for monoblogue. The first one just shows a piece of all the work that these people do just for a hobby. I took a picture of the overall car (a 1962 Chevy Impala) but cropped out just the engine to show that work.

The next two pictures actually have a lesson of sorts behind them. First I'm going to show a picture of the engine of a 1963 Chevy Corvair.

You'll notice I'm taking a picture from the back. For those readers not old enough to remember the Corvair when it was relatively new, the car received notoriety a few years later when future presidential candidate Ralph Nader made it the subject of a book called Unsafe At Any Speed. With that, the auto safety movement was born and the Corvair faded away a few years later.

If you saw this car at the festival (it was the only Corvair there) you'd have seen that it was a nice white Monza convertible with a red interior. So it wasn't the bare-bones Corvair model that probably cost hundreds less. What I find sort of ironic is that some of the people who actually made this car are still being paid by you every time you buy a GM product. They're almost certainly retirees who still get covered under the GM health insurance plan, and I seem to recall that this $2800 is roughly the cost that GM pays out of each car sold today to take care of its retirees. I may be off somewhat, but just think about this number when you read that the Big Three are hugely in favor of government-subsidized health care (i.e. HillaryCare).

Ok, enough about politics.

By the time I'd gone through the car show, Main Street was beginning to become a bit crowded. I took this picture below about the time the first band I stopped to see got started.

Something that they started down on the Plaza end of the festival was a 36' long canvas that people could paint individual squares of. I actually took this shot about 11:00 and unfortunately didn't go back later to check out the progress and see what the finished product looked like - probably a riotous display of colors and styles.

I also went over to Lot 10 to check out the ADA Mini Grand Prix. It was a go-cart race on a "road course" set up about Lot 10, and watching these little cars go around the track I could tell it was bumpy. A lack of city maintenance perhaps? And when they hit the wall (as one did while I was watching) they hit it hard as these cars can go up to about 30 mph. Below is a shot of a couple of these cars trading paint - some were pretty beat up by the time they survived the qualifying heats and 40 lap feature race. A car sponsored by Sub Side Deli won that race, it was pretty dominant throughout.

Finally, I got a chance to check out some of the local musical talent. Because these two bands are apparently populated by youngsters, they don't play in the local over-21 clubs often. So here was an opportunity to scout some of what the kids were playing today. Pictured below is one band called Losing 76. (Why that is I don't know.)

I must say that they're a raw talent, but that can be expected from a young band. They seem to have a heavy alternative influence on their style, and it showed in both their couple originals they played and the covers they picked (if I recall correctly they did a song from Weezer and one from Blink 182.) They may be a band to watch in the coming years if they can work at it and find venues to play at on a regular basis.

Later in the day, a band called Apathy closed out the Court Street Stage. Their band I'd actually heard previously as they got a little bit of time on the X106.9 "Local Tracks" show a week or two ago. They're farther along in the evolution process than Losing 76, and have even endured a few personnel changes along the way since they recorded a full-length CD last year (one I bought.) So when I saw they were on the bill for the Festival, I knew I had to make a beeline to where they were performing, and they didn't disappoint - with one exception.

The band has a song called "Anything You Want" that I would've liked them to play; however, they did do some good covers, most notably a passable version of the Hendrix classic "Purple Haze" and Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit." Like I was surprised because in listening to them initially I thought they had a very Nirvana-style sound, particularly in the way lead vocalist Chris Vansciver sings.

I sort of wonder if there's not going to be a name change in their future, though - if you look on Myspace Apathy is hardly an original name. Regardless, these guys should be a force on the local music scene in the very near future too.

And I have no picture of this, but I met and renewed acquaintances with several interesting people along the way. I made sure to have my lunch at the Wicomico County Republican Club booth in the food court and checked out how my brownies I brought were selling (they sold out, hope they were good!)

Finally my day out ended by participating (along with about 120 others) in the 2nd Annual Ben Layton 5K Run/Walk. I walked the 2 miles and was sucking wind at the end - not because I can't walk two miles (that's about a regular walk for me in my neighborhood) but because I was trying to do it in under 30 minutes. I'm happy to say I made it in about 26 minutes. Found a gear or two I forgot I had as I try to drop a bit off the 32.6% body fat the health screening at the Festival said I had. (The good news is that it was over 37% last year when they did it. So I'm progressing well.)

Now the interesting part will be to find out how much all of this cost the city of Salisbury. Insofar as I know there were no criminal incidents but that may be because I wasn't involved in any. The Festival is moderately successful so eliminating the troubles that have plagued it in the past is a key to making it more prosperous in the future.