Death, taxes, and rain during Art Fair

Art Fair opening day.  It's been a tradition in Jon's family for many years, and has been part of my life as well for all of the eight years that I've known him.  Sure, lots of locals avoid the Art Fair like the plague, but we run straight for it the day it arrives.  For us it's a chance to spend time with family that we see, well, once every July.  It's also an excuse to gorge ourselves on pizza (during the annual Cottage Inn lunch) and to window (or tent) shop our way through art we can appreciate but can't afford.  This year we were fortunate enough to snag the entire day to spend traversing the many corridors of varying artistic abilities, tactile, visual, and auditory.  It's always fun to look for artists you've seen in years past, and also to recognize new booths and new talents.  Strangely enough it wasn't ninety degrees this year, and it didn't rain buckets, either.  Instead we enjoyed coolish temperatures, a mostly cloud covered sun, and, except for a five minute downpour in the afternoon, an incredibly dry day.  Unfortunately, a combination of the economy and the forecast of scattered thunderstorms kept the crowds to a relatively minimum–good for us, not so much for the artists–and there were far fewer people wading their way through the crowds carrying unwieldy bundles of unique purchases (the upside of which is the lessened risk of having your eye poked out by someone's art on a stick).  But even if there were fewer eye catching (or eye threatening) moments in the crowd, there were certainly several stand outs punctuating our enjoyment of the day:  the Michael Jackson impersonator was a particular favorite of Calvin's (and maybe all of ours); Calvin and Auntie Rite's performance of an MJ rain dance for the fifty or so people gathered under the LS&A overhang during the short downpour; the ludicrous, but enjoyable, entertainment at the corner of William and State in the form of dancing pizza, water, banana, and carrot.  There were some more serious stand outs, too, like the beautiful 8 car wooden train that Calvin came home with (thanks to his doting grandparents), our group's gorgeous jewelry purchases (also a yearly tradition), the bronzed rabbit with the huge ears (that we did not purchase), and the magnificent purple wood we kept seeing everywhere (made from the purple heart tree–we learn something new every year).  And that about sums up our 2009 Art Fair experience.