Wanna Take This Outside?

It's already the first week of October, so I guess we can call it Fall now. It's not beating down sunshine and the weather had cooled down, going out had became enjoyable again.

The past Saturday there was a great street fair in Philly with a weird name, it's called the Fourth Fall Festival in the Midtown Village. After living in Philly for nearly a decade, I've just started to find out that the center city part of Philadelphia had little districts with names that I've never heard of. A few weeks ago, the boyfriend and I stumbled on a sign saying French Quarter around Rittenhouse Square and I thought that was a New Orleans-only reference. Anyhow, in the past 4 years or so, Midtown Village had been bought up by a developer and transformed the two block area into various shops, bars and restaurants. A lesbian couple has opened up 2-3 ethnic restaurants and a corner prepared food store called Grocery. One of my favorite home goods stores are also located in the same block. It's all brand new and very exciting. The street fair provided an excellent occasion to get people into the area and promote the shops.


The Japanese restaurant brought out the big guns to attract customers.

I guess it's partly because of the weather but I haven't seen that many people out in a while. Also due to the occupants of the block, this fair turned out to be more food and drinks related than anything else which I really do appreciate. Mexican, Indian, Japanese, various BBQ food, chocolate, gelati, baked goods, all lined up in one for purchase. I had an order of pulled pork tacos from one of the Stephen Starr restaurants, which was good. An Indian spiced chili dog which tasted great but require a spoon to eat after the flimsy bun got too soggy to hold itself up and a mango lassi that wasn't quite cold enough to be refreshing. I was tempted to get a $2 pork slider from the Marriot restaurant but I guess I was full by then. The side streets were crawling full of booze vendors, though I did not have a single drink. It was a great event on a great day.


Cute, but I think I've made tastier tacos. (Lol, everyone is a critic.)

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This Sunday is the National Coming Out Day and in Philly we have OutFest which is a GLBT street fair that happens once a year in our Gayborhood. It's the less commercial version of Pride and what it's used to be before setting up camp elsewhere and charging a $10 admission. Different organization having booths to recruit members, different causes excepting signatures and donations, corporate sponsors building alliances and relationships. Gay guys who likes to see and be seen. You know? The usual.



At the same time, DC is having the National Equality March for us gays to raise awareness and demand our rights. Since we seems to have a competent president in the White House this time around, maybe showing up in numbers will do some good. Though I have to say the recent health reform efforts had been quite discouraging, but it maybe politicians no matter which party they're in will always choose the side of money and it might not have to do with the competency of the president. (Eh, did we just put the abstinence only sex ed back in place?) Anyway, I'm always cynical on what good will a protest or a march could achieve, but then I know sitting on my ass won't do much good either. Besides, it could be the biggest GLBT march in our generation, if it's not for the historic side of it, think of the potential number of hot guys and celebrity sightings. And if it's not for the march, what about the cruising of bars after the march?

The only problem for me is as always - transportation. While there is a relatively inexpensive bus going to DC from Chinatown, they only operate 3 times a day and if the march starts at 12:00 noon, I may have to rise in a good awful hour and still be late for the event. I couldn't possibly afford to stay overnight and it could well be all booked up by now. So my best bet is to find a friend who is going to drive down and see if I can bum a ride, or maybe hitchhike down to DC, maybe I could get a sense what Woodstock was like.

Go to the site to learn more. (Honestly though, it seems like the site and its message was put together in a hurry, doesn't it?)