Cooper-Young Festival

Last Saturday was the annual Cooper-Young Festival held in one of Memphis's cooler neighborhoods (Cooper-Young, naturally). This is one of the areas I wanted to live when we were looking at where to relocate. It's kind of like the Fremont of Memphis, maybe. Since it's more of an established neighborhood, it's not the sort of place that has apartment complexes with lots of online reviews to reassure those people who are moving sight unseen...hence we wound up in East Memphis. But it's ok, we can still hang out in C-Y and pretend like we're hip.

The festival took place on two main roads that were blocked to traffic and filled with vendors/booths. On each end of the closed streets, there were stages set up for various artists to perform. The weather was perfect - about 80 degrees, low humidity, not a cloud in the sky. I heard this is what passes for "fall" here...(?)

Look at that bright blue sky!! (I actually had a hamburger, not a pronto pup)

I really enjoyed this festival. Maybe it was the fact that the weather was nicer than it has been in a long time, or the good music, or just the general setting and communal feel. It was fun. We stopped by a number of local shops, too - got some tasty iced coffee at Java Cabana where they also have board games! We made up our own game with a box of mixed trivia cards from several different games. Though we didn't keep score, I'm sure that D.F. won :)

Here are my observations from this festival, as compared to similar Seattle festivals (closest comparison I think is the West Seattle Summer Fest):

• A lot more cigarette smoking, and smokers stood in the middle of the crowd - not off to the side
• Way less pot. D.F. thinks he saw some people with a joint. I didn't smell anything suspicious.
• Fewer dogs, which I think was because the festival had a no-pets policy.
• Public drinking is allowed and encouraged. People were walking around with their own cups of adult beverages they brought from home.
• Beer choices were Bud Light and Miller Light in aluminum bottles, and a ton of people were paying $4/bottle to drink it! I scoured the premises and found one booth with an IPA on tap. Yes, that was one beer on tap for the whole festival. I don't even like IPAs. Would it kill you to have an amber, Memphis???? 
• No recycling. At all. All those aluminum beer bottles went in the trash.

Ok, so those last two were more complaints than just observations. I'm not being a very good cultural exchange participant here, sorry...

After living it up at the festival, we got stuck in a bit of a traffic jam trying to get home because there was a big football game going on for the Southern Heritage Classic. People were parking all over the place - like on the grassy median in the middle of the road, and local residents were charging $5 or $10 to park on their yards. (Aside: parking on grass seems to be standard practice here. We've done it ourselves for a few festivals/events.) Traffic was backed up for miles. I think they need a better off-site parking/shuttle system, but hey, that's just me. Luckily we were trying to drive away from the stadium, so we escaped before too long.