Bubbles and Other Friendly Folk

Pop quiz!...Where is a common place to encounter bubbles: 

A. Haunted Houses

B. Ancient Ruins

C. Street Fairs

The answer is C! Street fairs!

Seattle has all sorts of street fairs throughout summer. The first one of the season I went to was the U District street fair. The very best part of street fairs is without a doubt the people watching! Street fairs attract all sorts of creative eccentrics and unique souls.

I love street performers! These two are some of my all time favorite!

Two cat-people playing music! One cat-person played the accordion while the other played the fiddle. Not only was their shtick charming and adorable, the music was good too!

There was also a contemplative street poet creating works of poetry for passerby's. If your creative pursuit of choice is writing, it is a little more difficult to make it into a street preforming gig, but this young poet was able to intermingle his love of writing with his entrepreneur zest for street preforming.

 Bagpipers are underutilized musicians here in the states. But this young bagpiper has no fears about the lack of bagpipe enthusiasm, he has embraced his instrument and is ready too share is music with he world!

 Jugglers always seem to be very popular street fairs. This guy got quite the crowd.

But it is not just the street performers that are interesting at street fairs...the fair goers are always really interesting also.

This beautiful rollerskating fairy was the first person who caught my eye at the fair. At street fairs, a person is suddenly transported to a land where fairy's roam (or roll) free.

Street fairs also give people a forum to present their agenda to a large audience. This person's agenda was to find a friend to chat with....well, a physically available female friends, so maybe more of a romantic partner. Here is what the sign said "Female biped wanted for egalitarian accommodation. Need to be emotionally and physically available. Not interested in your car, home or money. Your values, lifestyle and priorities is the universe I seek. Care to chat?"

I wonder if he ended up finding someone. It is a unique way to do a personal ad.

I also saw a group of peace loving protesters. This is an agenda I can stand behind!

I went to the street fair with my friend, and we had a grand time looking at people and booths, and looking a people looking at booths.

But when it came to food, there was a hitch in our easy -going day. He is vegan and I am vegetarian, and fair food is decidedly aimed toward the carnivorous. We were surrounded by pulled pork, corn dogs (no vegetarian ones, I checked since they are a favorite) and all types of simmering, broiling, barbecuing meat (or, to our minds, dead animals....ahh!). But luckily, the u district is full of veggie friendly restaurants. We went to a Japanese restaurant. Hanging up by the front door, they had an awesome map with pins showing where different customers were from.

A street fair is like it's own little world in itself. It exists for a moment parallel to our own real world, then disappears, leaving behind the faint smell of fried food and kettle corn. The once vibrant streets of the fair world now strewn with flyers, scraps of indiscernible color and other remains of the fair.