Vic West Fest - May, 2009

A visitor commented yesterday that all that was missing from Saturday's photo was some of Victoria's friendly people so here's a sample from our amiable Victoria West community enjoying a musical performance at the Vic West Fest at Banfield Park on Saturday. The enthusiastic youngster above is applauding the performance of the Balkan Babes. We are fortunate to hear their award-winning a cappella renditions of Balkan folk songs at many Vic West events. They were featured in an earlier post on this blog and you can hear some of their powerful and affecting music on their MySpace page, http://www.myspace.com/balkanbabes. In the photo below they are performing just in front of the slides and swings of the Banfield Park playground. That's the Gorge just visible through the trees in the background.

Victoria West Community Corn Roast

I mentioned in yesterday's post that I'd spent the afternoon at a corn roast in my neighborhood and above is the poster announcing it. I very much enjoy these small neighborhood events and I am happy to live in a city where most neighborhoods have something similar a couple of times each year. This kind of event is more typical of small towns and contributes a great deal to building a real sense of community in this city. My hat's off to the Vic West Community Association for making this happen. Thanks.

Below, two of the event's organizers finish off the corn maze they constructed with the corn shucks. I did not take this photo. A gentleman more intrepid than I scaled a nearby post box to take his own photo and was kind enough to snap this one for me also. The corn roast events took place under the awnings visible on the top left.Below on the left is the corn pot full of delicious sweet corn. On the right is one of the entrants for the Zuchini Nascar Race.

It's a neighborhood that is rich with talented musicians and below are only two of the groups that performed.

Children of Celebrities

Balkan Babes
This event also celebrated the sixth anniversary of the Spiral Cafe, a great place that I'll write more about soon. Well, there were other good things to eat including some great apple pies, and interesting neighbors to meet and talk with, including our local member of parliament (Denise Savoie), a brief rain shower, guinea pigs, rabbits, chickens, a farmer's market, face painting...but I imagine that if you have read this far and you're not from Vic West, your eyes are glazing over. So I will just let you imagine just how nice it all was on this warm afternoon in late September and leave you with the photo below, when some of the local children came up to draw the winning tickets in the raffle.