DOWNWARD FORCE

 

A last old photo from a Cinco de Mayo festival on Cherokee Street. There is something new to shoot today. All the photography courses I’ve ever taken have taught me to avoid having objects protruding from people’s bodies, e.g., no light poles growing out of someone’s head. However, I kinda like what happened here.                

MEXICAN ACCORDION

Sampling more old Cinco de Mayo and People’s Parade pix to fill for last weekend’s rainout. The lettering on the instrument says Monterrey. I wish I had an audio recording.               

NOT SO FUNNY

Quick, send in the clowns

But where are the clowns?

Don't bothеr, they're herе.

Going with more old People’s Parade pix because of Saturday’s rainout. The crew of scary clowns always shows up.           

 

IF IT WEREN’T RAINING SO MUCH

One of our best annual photo ops got washed out yesterday. The first part is the People’s Parade, where anybody can sign up, dress and display as they will and march down the street in one of our funkiest neighborhoods. The area is also the center of our Latino population and the venue for the Cinco de Mayo festival. It’s a minor event in Mexico, celebrating a victory over French colonial forces, but lots of Americans use it as an excuse to swill tequila in public. St. Louis sure does.

But it rained all afternoon and evening, leaving me without days of material. I’ve been shooting these events for years so I can bring back some old favorites.                         

WANT A LOOK?

It piques your curiosity. Are you a bit envious that there might be something really great in there that you don't have? The fact that you (or most of us) wouldn't stop a stranger walking through a crowded street festival and ask for a glance makes it all the more enticing. The contents are unknowable and we are missing out. 

Once again, seen on Cherokee Street.     

PERSPIRE

A young man at the Cinco de Mayo festival. He has a serious expression and a perplexing tee shirt. Sure, people get hot playing most sports (maybe not ski jumping) but what's the point of proclaiming it? Maybe it's just sporty.   

Tee shirts can be confusing. Once in Japan I saw someone in a shirt with the text "we slay all suckers who perpetrate and lay down law from state to state." At first I thought it was hostile gibberish. A commenter later told me it was a line from Run DMC.     

THE GAMBLER

What do you think the chances are he is playing video poker on his phone? Or that he has a fashion consultant?

Seen on Cherokee Street.             

NO ES NECESARIO HABLAR ESPAÑOL

Lots of pictures of the parade left but I decided to look down the street for something different. Cinco de Mayo is a minor observance in Mexico (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinco_de_Mayo). Here it is an excuse to consume large amounts of Corona beer and Jose Quervo tequila. As I have noted, St. Louis loves an opportunity to drink in public and this is a big one.

So the party spilled down Cherokee Street all afternoon and evening. Have a burrito with your booze. You could roughly translate chapparito as shorty, perhaps a reference to the owner.    

CHECKMATE

Well, not yet. The St. Louis Chess club is a big deal. It has hosted major championship competitions and is the venue for the Chess Hall of Fame. It teaches the game to kids and anyone else who wants to learn. 

I'm no good at chess. Weak visual analytical skills or something. If any aficionados would like to analyze this match, please leave a comment.          

VESTI LA GIUBBA

There was a group of clowns in the People's Joy Parade who got something to eat afterwards (clowns get hungry, too, although you'd never know it) and hung around during some of the Cinco de Mayo festival. I'll have more but I particularly liked this one. S/he seemed sad/not sad, or maybe just pensive and observant. I like all the ambiguity.

Being an opera fan, clowns often make me think of I Pagliacci . Put on the costume and make people laugh, even if your heart is breaking. https://youtu.be/-kbi1EMcD3E

          

MADELEINE MONDAY

Pictures will go back and forth for a while between the People's Joy Parade and the Cinco de Mayo festival.

Ellie likes face painting but often what's available is very basic. However, at the festival we met an extraordinary makeup artist, Debra Filipelli, https://www.facebook.com/debrafilipellic/photos?lst=842012312%3A1063685161%3A1557090501 . Her range of skills is exceptional.

The kid loved it. She wanted her mom to text her teacher and ask if she could wear it to school on Monday. Um, no.            

Freude, schöner Götterfunken

Don't know how many years it's been going on or if the Cinco de Mayo street party tacked onto it or the other way around. It's one of the reasons why I like living in STL. Some local artists cooked up an everybody-has-a-good-time freestyle parade, the People's Joy Parade. It heads east on funky Cherokee Street precisely at 1:11 PM (no idea why but it's a tradition). Nobody tries to sing Beethoven, which would be great for the theme except you can't march to it. Since the occasion is loosely Mexican, everyone strides off to Cielito Lindo. 

The cast of characters is engaging. We will meet more of them.             

Consumerism

The back door of a truck that is a mobile women's clothing store. The words are a play on a Supremes song that is more than 50 years old. I wonder how many passers-by got the reference. In any event, more stuff doesn't get you love or anything but  a passing buzz.       

Mexican Music, Mexican-ish Food

I've still got a backlog of raw images to edit and I haven't even started on what I shot last weekend. It occurred to me to take some time off during this holiday weekend. Do you think it's likely?

The first photo is the singer in a Mexican band. She was really into it and I enjoyed her passion. I speak a little Spanish and I understood some of the song. Like a lot of popular music, it sort of boiled down to "ooh, baby baby."

The restaurant in the second picture was new to me.  It sounds like heaven. To hell with the cardiologist. Enjoy life.   

I've Been There

Another hip shot.  Actually, I've walked by there several times but have not actually been in it. Not really my kind of place.  

We can figure out the sticker to the left. Check. I think the one on the right is Paris. Check.  The lower right has to be Wales. Check. The flag just below the buckle is that of the City of St. Louis. Well, obviously. There is still an awful lot on the list.   

Canción Mexicana

A Mexican festival needs Mexican music. I'm a bit amazed by people who play this kind of accordion. A piano keyboard gives a performer reference points to the notes. This instrument just has dots strewn across it. Must take a long time to learn.      

We The People

We're all Americans. I don;t care if some of us wear a hijab, a rapper wears a backwards baseball cap, a Hasidim wears a wide-brimmed black hat, a biker wears a bandana or John Wayne wears a cowboy hat. 

Makes me think of this picture from the Women's March with a similar spirit.              

Clowning Around

This person in the first picture was pretty out there, aggressively sticking his face in my lens here and there through the afternoon. It was the kind of clown that can give clowns a bad reputation, scaring children and such.

The second one makes me think of a kachina. I don't know if that was the intention. We will be spending some time on the Navajo and Hopi reservations in September. I'll think about it some more then.

       

Shoot From The Hip

As my friends know, I like to shoot people in the crowd at public events. But sometimes it is so packed that it's almost impossible to do. You could park yourself on a corner to shoot people coming towards you but even that may not work if you can;t get a long enough view.

There is another way to go about it. Sometimes I will walk through a crowd with the camera at my hip, finger on the shutter button. If I see something interesting I point the camera in the general direction, click and hope for the best. Almost no one notices. Surprising how often I get a good result.     

The Squared Circle

They always have wrestling at Cinco de Mayo, the faked and staged American commercial version. Often it's the Mexican variant, lucha libre, with its colorfully masked contestants. Not this time, at least while I was there. But anything goes, as long as it looks violent but really isn't. It is a field trip in cultural anthropology.