Tag: street fairs

Octoberfest on the Upper East side

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After breakfast (bagels, eggs, and bacon), we headed out for a walk around the Upper East Side. There was an Octoberfest street fair being held on 84th between 2nd and 3rd and Jen wanted to check it out so we wandered over there at around 11 AM to see what it was all about. Both sides of the street were lined with booths, some of which were still being setup. As we walked slowly down the street, however, I noticed that almost none of the booths had anything to do with Octoberfest whatsoever. Some booths were selling socks, for instance. Others were selling old-fashioned lunch boxes (I saw two lunch boxes that I thought Dan would have liked, one for the Ramones, the other for the Sex Pistols). There were other types of clothing and jewlery booths, but none had any particular German flavor to them. In fact, it wasn’t until we reached the far end of the street that we came across an band setting up, which looked as though it was going to play Octoberfest music.

It seemed like the street fair was taking advantage of what was clearly an ethnic celebration. It had very little to do with the celebration, however and I must say that I was somewhat disappointed by its blatent commercialism.

Nanuet, Day 3, weekend wrapup

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Norm and I had breakfast this morning while Vicky was out bringing home the bacon. In the early afternoon, we decided to head down to Nyack for the street fair they were holding. I’d been to the Nyack street fair at least once before but it had been a really long time ago. Almost immediately, I located the funnel cake (which Vicky found to be very amusing). After the funnel cake, I naturally needed some cotton candy and so I had some of that too.

We wandered down the streets looking here and there, and I went into the Pickwick Bookshop and browsed the books for a few minutes, coming up with one small gem: The Three Investigators: The Mystery of the Green Ghost, a book I remember reading in third grade after purchasing it from The Weekly Reader.

Norm and Vicky did some shopping of their own and to prove it, here is a picture of them waiting in line to purchase some preserved produce:

We left the fair and headed back Norm and Vicky’s as it started to rain, and a short while later, I got in the car for the four hour and thirty minute drive home.

All-in-all, it was a fun weekend, as is usually the case with Norm and Vicky. Below are a few more pictures from our trip, and I apologize in advance for the graininess, but they were taken from my camera phone.


Norm and Vicky at Turtle Lake (where we located the geocache for which we’d been searching)


Norm and Jamie at Turtle Lake (just to prove I was really there)


House-hunting with Norm and Vicky