Austin Tomorrow
Here's what you need to know about a seven-foot tall black eyed pea: it can crush you.Austin, for once, actually did something involving art that was utterly lacking in pretension: a festival called Austin First that featured all kinds of funky and funny art projects. Thousands of people completed chalk drawings that were linked to go all the way across the Lavaca Street bridge (Eli 4.4 drew a Stegosaurus). People created all kinds of art bicycles for a parade (think floats on bicycles--giant bugs, fireflies, all kinds of crazy stuff). There were films being projected on the side of a ten-story hotel. There were giant foam machines blowing foam snow through the trees. There were absolutely gigantic street lanterns lighting the bridges.
Gloria took Eli during the afternoon. Then she took me that evening. She double-shifted a festival.
I'm not a festival guy. I'm not a giant turkey leg eating, folk art buying, meade drinking kind of guy. Even I would admit, though, that this was totally cool. It was just fun things to see and do--no crappy art to buy, just art to enjoy.
Here's one more example of how much fun this all was: we looked off the edge of a bridge and looked down Town Lake (which is about as wide as a big river, really--maybe two hundred yards across). There, in a rowboat, was a guy slowly rowing along the middle of the lake--towing these floating white triangles behind him, all linked together and illuminated inside. It was a "dragon," although it looked more like a "big triangle," and it really was beautiful.
And it wasn't crowded. One of the reasons it wasn't crowded is because while the festival was called "Austin First," it should have been called "Austin Tomorrow," because the name made everone think it was on New Year's Day instead of New Year's Eve. So everyone you asked about the festival would say "Isn't that tomorrow?"
Temperatures were in the sixties on New Year's Eve, so it was totally comfortable. People were just hanging out and having fun.
We decided before we went home to check out the seven foot black-eyed pea. And, in a shocking turn of events, one of Gloria's old friends was one of the handlers.
"Sam! What are you doing?" Gloria asked.
"I'm the Keeper of The Pea," Sam said.
Since Sam (who I also know and like) was just standing there as people took pictures beside The Pea, I assumed that Keeper of the Pea was an honorary title.
Then it started to tip over.
Keeper of the Pea Sam leaped like a ninja, sprinting around some foliage to get to the back of The Pea. Holy shit, I thought. This Keeper of the Pea business is for real. He must be part of some secret order that protects giant art vegetables all over the world.
If you're not an American, you might not know that eating black-eyed peas on New Year's day is considered good luck. I could already see the headlines in the newspaper:
Good Luck Pea Collapses, Killing 2
Fortunately, although The Pea was certainly large enough to crush someone, it only weighed eighty pounds. What a waste of a good headline.
Sam also said that someone had dropped trou behind The Pea earlier in the day, and his friend (also a Keeper) had to yell "Hey, asshole! Don't pee on The Pea!"
On the way back to the car, Gloria said "I thought it would be bigger."
"So did I," I said. "I guess a seven-foot black-eyed pea is gigantic from a regular pea's perspective, but to a human, it just looked very tall. I guess 'Very Tall Pea' wouldn't have attracted many people."
We saw a water sculpture outside City Hall. I was kind of an art version of the Black Hole, where you toss a penny and it rolls around and around until it disappears into the hole. This was similar, except water traced a continuous path, then disappeared without a trace.
"What is that?" Gloria asked.
"Art," I said. "I think it's called 'Bond Issues.' "
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