Tag: Festival

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Just landed in NOLA

There’s a cool breeze tickeling my thin shirt in the cylindar style termanal C of the “Satcho” AKA Louis Armstrong Airport in New Orleans, Louisiana. I’ve just landed and I’m chillin (literally, I thought it was supposed to be hot down ‘er) in cookie cuter stiff airport seats of the “lobby” waiting for a friend to land, and head into the CBD.

Why the lobby? Nothing is open. After 9 apparently everything in this terminal shuts down. Good to know on the next time around. I’m looking at a row of stores with books begging to be thumbed through, PJ’s coffee waiting for that percalation and across from the Jazz alley lounge where I thought I would be sipping down my first brew of the weekned in New Orleans…

I’m here for the 2nd weekend of the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival and to tear it up for the first time with some friends from the east. There’s not much planned but a spot to sleep and the festival headlined by Stevie Wonder, Jimmy Buffett, The Roots, Santana, Steel Pulse and hundreds of other superbly tallented jazz musicians.

Here’s to po boys and dirty girls, schucked oysters and hot river boat casinos…

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Dragons in Flushing

This weekend we went to check out the annual Hong Kong Dragon Boat Festival in Flushing NY. The festival is significant in China, celebrated by a day of narrow boat races shaped like dragons. Competing teams row their boats in sync with a furious rhythm pounded out by on-board drummers. The dragon-boat races symbolize the frantic attempts to rescue Qu Yuan.

Qu Yuan is said to have committed suicide by drowning himself in a river. Qu Yuan was a minister in the kingdom of Chu situated in present-day Hunan and Hubei provinces during the Warring States period (475 – 221 BC). He was upright, loyal and highly esteemed for his wise counsel that had brought peace and prosperity to the kingdom.

Many of the teams are locally sponsored and seem to celebrate the day with music food, drink, crafts, games (quite a few gambling tents) and the rest of the locals hanging out around the river for the day. It hazy and humid but not too hot. The event was quite expansive in the park but was not as populous as I thought it might have been; quite possibly because there was so much land. I enjoyed both the Chinese (noodles, dumplings, satay) and non-Chinese food (corn and shaved ice).

On the way back, I noticed many volunteers canvasing the crowd for Obama “working for the Asian American and Pacific Islander community”. I can already tell if there’s this much initiative to hit all cultural backgrounds and events like this, then Obama is throwing the net out to all corners and will have a huge turn out in November next year.

Some pics from the event:

A few more from the gallery

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Dancing in the streets to fight the law

There are only 69 venues in Manhattan where it’s legal to dance. Since the inception of the Cabaret Law in 1926 designed initially to curb public lewdness and interracial mixing, the laws were made tighter in the 80s by renewed building codes, neighborhood zonings and renewal laws. City wide there are 148 cabaret licenses and that includes adult entertainment, hotels, and restaurants.

The Cabaret law forbids any type of dancing at any establishment not licensed by the city to allow such practice. So essentially that booty shaking you do at your local bar’s jukebox is essentially illegal and could land the bar several hundred dollars in fines if the authorities choose to enforce the law.

These laws are antiquated and serve little public good as it’s the noise laws that regulate the club and bars of New York, not the cabaret laws when it seems now, only serve as another method to “tax” nightlife establishments.

This month, organizers of the upcoming 1st annual “Dance Parade” kicks off on May 19th and they expect to gather about 6300 dancers of all types for a festival/protest of sorts to bring awareness to this ridiculous law. Kicking off with a parade down Broadway and ending in Tompkins Square Park (tentative change to Washington Square park?), expect to have DJs Kool Herc, Danny Tenaglia, John “Jellybean” Benitez and more spin house, dance and all types of tracks to get your feet moving for the repeal cause.