What’s Going On?

Carnaval this year was great and surprisingly hot. People from all over the Bay and the country came out to check out this special celebration of various cultures from Mexico, Central America, South America, and a few other countries as well. The majority of the festival took place on the Harrison Street where vendors sold their food and products. The festival started off light, but by mid-day the crowd packed the streets.

Like most festivals, this festival had a couple of stages for live performances, there were a couple of drinking areas, and throughout the festival there were food and shopping available. This festival also had a new addition this year and it was an area dedicated to dancing. Most of the music at the festival was Latin inspired, but there was Jazz and Reggae as well. For the kids, there was an area for a little batting practice and a few inflattable jumping zones.

The festival lasted for two days with the final day having a Grand Parade on Sunday. Great event for family, friends, neighbors, co-workers, and all. If you haven’t been to this you’ll be in for a surprise because this is one of the festivals that can get jam packed. Especially on the day of the Grand Parade when parade attenders flock to Harrison Street after the parade down Mission Street.

Pictures of the Carnaval festival can be seen by clicking on the picture link above. If this post was informative and helpful, please feel free to leave me a comment or donation below. Thank you.

May is Asian Pacific American Month and one of the last events during the month was a privately held Asian Pacific American Month Celebration thrown by employees of the Federal Building. The event took place in the ceremonial courtroom of the Federal Building at Civic Center. The turnout for the event was very successful. The large crowd filled up the benches of the courtroom and they were able to see several Polynesian dance performances, along with a couple of songs, a Samurai sword demonstration, and a speech given by keynote speaker Miss Chinatown USA Crystal Lee.

The performances for the afternoon were pretty enjoyable, but among the top of enjoyable moments was when a few State and Federal workers were asked to perform some hula and that’s when things got a little interesting. Having been able to attend, I really had a great time being able to enjoy the moment.

Following the performances, guests and employees enjoyed a luncheon with a taste of Asia where the food was vast and abundant. Different types of Asian cusine lined the tables. There was Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, Vietnamese, Korean, and Hawaiian food available. Everything was delicious and the event was fun.

Pictures of the APA Heritage Celebration can be seen by clicking on the picture link above. If this post was informative and helpful, please feel free to leave me a comment or donation below. Thank you.

San Mateo County Fairgrounds was host to the famous Maker Faire where maker’s of arts & crafts, gadgets and gizmos, and other various contraptions were shown to the public. Entrance to the fair was at most $25 for at the door costs, but presale tickets were sold at a discount. The fair took over the whole fairgrounds and much was to be seen. Entertainment lined the fairgrounds inside and out with tons of stuff to see and do left and right. Food was all over the places and looked and smelled great.

One of the most entertaining things to see at this show was being able to see music come from electrical arcs from Tesla coils. With a live band playing as back up, a man in a wire meshed suit stood between two huge Tesla coils and was able to allow electricity to go to his suit and closing the circuit.

This year Bazaar Bizarre SF obtained the Cypress Room where vendors from all over came to show off their work. Lots of people came to shop around and many just looked around at some of the cool and interesting creations that people can come up with. Many vendors sold jewelry and clothing, but some of the most interesting ones came from a few that made stuffed animals from different types of materials. Some animals were made from cotton (yarn), some from felt, and some from denim or other various materials.

Having walked around the bazaar there were many things that I wish I could purchase, but I know if I did that I wouldn’t have any more money left in my bank. However, just being able to see these items brought a sense of joy and happiness to me.

Although, I did not spend much time searching the whole fairgrounds, I had a great time meeting the makers of Bazaar Bizarre. They are ordinary people trying to make a living by selling some of their creations. A lot of them do it as a hobby, but most of them do it for a living. Come out to an event and help support local artists, artists including myself. For more information on Bazaar Bizarre please go to their website at http://www.bazaarbizarre.org/sanfrancisco

Bay to Breakers is San Francisco’s excuse to have a crazy good time. It’s an event race where practically the whole city attends with many more coming from all over the Bay Area and even throughout the world. Some come with running the race in mind, some come just to relax and have a great time partying with friends and family. Some come clothed in costumes and some don’t come clothed at all.

This year’s race was a little better in terms of the weather, but still was a little bit on the chilly side, until the early afternoon when things started to clear up. The foot race seemed to have a lot more people, but the costumes were on the decline as to previous years. I think perhaps race attenders didn’t have enough disposable income to spend on creating costumes. Many race attenders just came armed with cameras to try and catch the craziest costumes and just the weirdest of things.

All in all, being able to document this foot race was pretty fun and seeing just the vast amount of people on the streets felt kind of surreal. The colors all over were just a photographers dream come true. I, myself, love colors all around it just makes me happy. However, when I come across old naked and even young people naked, it just throws me for a loop because this is just something you don’t see everyday, nor should you be exposed to some of them. I mean if you’re gonna expose yourself please look in the mirror and don’t punish people.

In the end, I had a great time. People that I photographed were nice and friendly. Some of the costumes were great and some not so great, but in the end I think that it’s the spirit of laughter and joy that make this foot race so fun to attend. My favorite costumes this year for the race would have to go to the groups that created team outfits, especially the group of gnomes, the Pac-Man group, the Mario Kart groups, and the Tetris group. Congratulations guys for making me laugh, you guys are great. Until next year folks! See you at the races!!!

Pictures of the Bay to Breakers can be seen by clicking on the picture link above. If this post was informative and helpful, please feel free to leave me a comment or donation below. Thank you.

The 6th Annual Asian Heritage Street Celebration filled Larkin St. from Civic Center all the way up to Little Saigon. The street festival started with some cold gloomy weather, but heated up by mid-afternoon. Early Asian festivities started with the Faces of Asia parade. The parade started at the Asian Art Museum and went through the festival all the way to the top of the festival at Eddy Street and back down to the Cultural and Jazz Stage.

Featured entertainers of the festival were the West Coast Lion Dance Troupe, Frances Ancheta Becker, Kapakahi, Native Elements, Trackademics, Kat o1o (Crown City Rockers), Far East Movement, The CounterParts, Curt Yagi, Kazha, akai Sky, Chung Ngai Dance Troupe, Argonne Elementary School, Purple Orchids, ASEAN Corner, Chardi Jawani Stanford Bhangra, Gen Taiko, AHSC Best Dance Crew Contest (hosted by WILD 94.9), SF Pinoy Jazz Revnue, Balut Eating Contest, YoYoJoe, Planet Infinity’s More Than Medals Taekwondo Team, Unity Tuy Ngoc Nguyen, and Animemyu.

One thing that this street celebration does not lack in and that is entertainment. It is very difficult to catch everything in one day, but if you can pull it off to catch half of it you did a pretty good job. Just the entertainment on the stages alone was a lot, but don’t forget the street celebration itself. The street festival not to mention has vendors that sell arts & crafts, gifts, food, information, a kiddie carnival, they also have sponsors that give out free things and booths that can even teach you how to play mahjong. If that’s not enough, there’s import cars to check out and if that’s not entertaining enough, there’s Muay Thai Kick-boxing going on all day.

For a festival that starts at 10am and lasts till 6pm, it is one that is jam packed with stuff to do and see. It is a lot of fun and every year it seems to get better and better. What will the festival have in store for San Francisco next year? Who knows, come out to find out.

The Asian Pacific American Heritage Awards kicked off the Asian Heritage Month here in San Francisco at the Herbst Theatre in Civic Center. The Awards ceremony first started with classical music by cellist Charles Wang. The evening progressed with the granting of awards to the following from local dignitaries:

For Emerging Leadership: Thomas Li

For Lifetime Achievement: Dr. Edward Chow

For Community Impact: Asian & Pacific Islander Wellness Center

Throughout the award ceremony three performances took to the stage with a glow stick performance, a Southern Asian dance troupe, and folk dance from a Burmese group. The finale for the awards ceremony was remarkable with community involvement from all parts of Asia, including that of Vietnam, China, Japan, Pacific Islanders, Burma, South Asia, and many others. The finale was very colorful, not to mention very entertaining.

Following the awards ceremony was a time of Asian styled refreshments from local restaurants and sponsors on the second floor of the War Memorial Building. The food was delicious and the attendance was great. Ending off the night with food and mingling, what more can one ask for. Congratulations to all the award winners and thank you to all the sponsors who made this night possible.

Pictures of the Asian Pacific American Heritage Awards can be seen by clicking on the picture link above. If this post was informative and helpful, please feel free to leave me a comment or donation below. Thank you.

The First Noodle Festival took to the streets of San Francisco in two neighboring districts, North Beach and Chinatown. Each community creates their own awesome style of noodle on a daily basis, but which noodle reigns supreme of the community from which they are from. The Noodle Fest was brought to you buy the Chinatown Community Development Center and North Beach Merchants Association. Many showed up for this event for its first running and I believe it will not be its last.

The festival was held on Grant Street between the Pacific and Vallejo Streets. On each end of the festival were two great bands. On the Pacific Street Stage was Jest Jammin. A cover-band known for their funk and jazzy hits of the late 70s and 80s. On the Vallejo Street Stage was the MS Collective jazz band.

Throughout the event there were a couple of live demonstrations on how to make two types of noodles/pasta. Chef Shen demonstrated to the audience on how to make Shanghai dumplings, while Chef Carventz demonstrated how to roll out some pasta and make ravioli. Both demonstrations were pretty interesting.

The food at the festival was a hit with samplings from six vendors for $15 pre-ordered or $20 at the fest. Many vendors at the festival did not anticipate the high volume of supporters and thus did not have enough pasta to distribute to paying consumers. Nonetheless, I can tell by the all the faces that everyone was pleased by the great food and fun that they had. Perhaps next year, the festival will grow in size and more demonstrations will be featured on perhaps how to cook certain dishes. Until next year, we will see what happens. If the festival is put on again, make sure you venture out and tastes what North Beach and Chinatown have to offer.

Pictures of the Noodle Fest can be seen by clicking on the picture link above. If this post was informative and helpful, please feel free to leave me a comment or donation below. Thank you.

The US Japan Taiko Festival was held this year at the Sundance Kabuki Cinemas located in San Francisco’s Japantown. In the largest theater the taiko drumming groups performed two separate sets, but the finale both groups came together and played.

The show was open to the public and tickets were sold for $30 with a $5 discount towards students and seniors. The program featured Grand Master Seiichi Tanaka & San Francisco Taiko Dojo, SF Taiko Dojo Rising Stars and special guests from Japan were Hoya Wadaiko Kai and Bungo Kurenai Taiko.

The performance was pretty amazing. Synchronized drumming without any flaws is something that is hard to do. Practice makes perfect, one can say. Having two groups perform back to back was truly something special. In my opinion the performance was not long enough, but there’s always other shows and festivals to catch taiko drumming. The performance I believe was a great success because the seats were filled and guests seemed to enjoy the night by basking in the rhythms of taiko.

Having experienced this event for the first time, it is simply amazing. There’s a first for everything and listening to it outside in the streets of San Francisco is one thing, but listening to it inside of a movie theater is totally a new and different experience. If you would like to experience it please come and check it out next year or for upcoming events please check out the SF Taiko Dojo website at www.sftaiko.com

Pictures of the US Japan Taiko Festival  can be seen by clicking on the picture link above. If this post was informative and helpful, please feel free to leave me a comment or donation below. Thank you.

The Cherry Blossom Grand Parade was held this year on one of the warmest days that San Francisco has had this year thus far. The parade started in the early afternoon and lasted for about two hours. Meanwhile in the morning, there were tons to see and do. I eventually spent most of my time observing a few exhibits at the Hotel Kabuki. There I got to see some pretty awesome exhibits.

There were four main exhibits that were shown on Sunday and they were the origami exhibit, the bonsai tree exhibit, the paper doll exhibit, and the samurai sword exhibit. My favorite of the four was the paper dolls exhibit. Such great craftsmanship had gone into them that I felt like taking one home; however to my dismay, they were not for sale.

The Grand Parade featured a few local schools, local politicians and dignitaries, pageant contestants and queens, taiko drum troopes, other music groups, men and women from our local law enforcement, along with our fire department, and much much more. The finale of the parade was the highlight for most festival goers with two men whom are half naked on top of a sake keg carrying device who are being rocked side to side and men who toss sake into the air. It is said that the more the sake carrying device is rocked from side to side the more fortune it will bring.

Following the parade, the festival still kept going strong with their exhibits, bands hitting the stages once again, food vendors cooking up a storm, performances rocking the stage in Peace Plaza, and the festival finished off with an annual raffle where winners were pulled by the beautiful ladies of the Cherry Blossom Queens Program.

No plans for next year for two of the weekends in April, well make sure you pencil in a day at the Cherry Blossom Festival here in SF. It will not be disappointing, unless it rains of course.

Pictures of the holiday party can be seen by clicking on the picture link above. If this post was informative and helpful, please feel free to leave me a comment or donation below. Thank you.

The Cherry Blossom Festival once again never fails to be a fabulous festival and by no means does it get boring year after year. It’s a great Japanese cultural festival traditionally held here in San Francisco’s Japantown. The festival was held for two weekends this year in April and this year the weather was a little unpredictable. The first weekend of the festival it had rained and it really put a damper on attendance.

Although poor weather was present the first weekend, it did not rain on their parade, no pun intended. The second weekend of the festival received great sunny weather. It actually felt like summer in San Francisco for once.

Great things were to be seen at the festival with awesome cultural dances, cultural music, taiko drumming, cultural films, arts and crafts, an origami exhibit, a bonsai tree exhibit, a Japanese paper doll exhibit, a samurai sword exhibit, import cars, live jazz and funk bands, mochi making, great food, and much much more.

Probably the most interesting exhibit at the festival would have to be the Japanese paper doll exhibit. So much time and effort must be put into them that it shows in the final result. The precision that one must have to undergo is just astounding. The paper dolls were very colorful and full of life and you would not have guessed that the clothing would have been made out of folded and cut paper. Pictures of this exhibit and a few other exhibits I mentioned can be found on the link from the next posting.

Great fun and entertainment, the Cherry Blossom Festival is one of the greatest cultural festivals that is held here in San Francisco. If you haven’t checked it be sure to mark it on your calendars for next year because it will be a great time, you can count on that.