where did you go?

[calimac]

Out. To the Sunnyvale art & wine festival. I hadn't been to this one before, though I live in its city. Downtown Sunnyvale is still in the process of reconstruction, and it's confusing to get around, and with the festival hidden behind tall pillars of Target and Macy's, it was hard to figure out where was a good place to go park. I might suggest that these festivals invest in a clever form of technology known as the "sign", but that might be a little too advanced for them.

Once on foot, I tramped through the entire lengthy maze of streets before finally finding the deep back corner where they hid the food booths, since my principal interest in these things is lunch. I tried the main dish at the shrimp & grits booth, a bit of a surprising presence, and a bit dicey to carry in a leaky cardboard boat to a table. But it was pretty good. The tamale from a different San Jose tamale company than I usually patronize was not bad, too. And I got jambalaya from the New Orleans booth, had them cover it up with foil, and tramped back with it all the way to my car so that I could save it for the next day, as I know from experience it's even better that way.

Then I tramped back to the main sales booths to one that I'd noticed was selling small single-serve sweet potato pies, because I thought my B. might like one. The woman at the booth was handing out bites and offered me one. I recoiled, I'm afraid; I detest the stuff myself. But I managed to buy a pie and get away.

By this time the sun was hot and my feet were cramping in place, so it was barely possible to shuffle back to the car. I feared leaving, because of the food fight liable to break out among the circling cars when they saw a space was opening up. I got out safely, though. There are, perhaps, easier ways to get lunch.

Comments

[jra-calif.livejournal.com]

Oh good ol' Sunnyvale. But I remember it from the time I when I was living there so many years ago. So I haven't seen it in years, and I think I have seen our house at least once since we moved from there so many years ago, so I still remember it from the "good old days"; though I had always liked downtown; that I wished I had spent more time there. So, in a way, I kind of don't wish to see it remembering the few, at that time, remaining orchards...Thanks again, for posting...

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Downtown Sunnyvale has morphed several times, so what it's like depends on when you were there. The old downtown was torn out in the 1970s and replaced by a giant indoor shopping mall. This decayed into uselessness within a decade or so, and was eventually itself shut down, then torn down and replaced with a construction pit that lasted for at least a decade, and now it's finally being replaced with big box stores and big box parking garages that make passing between them feel like being a mouse in a canyon.

The art and wine festival is focused on the two blocks or so that were left of the original old downtown when the shopping mall moved in.