Bumbershoot Day One

Weather.com lied lied lied. Seattle was beautiful today! A little cloudy in the morning, but later in the afternoon, the sky opened up, and we though we were back in good ol' sunny California. Except that here we were in Bumbershoot, 30th anniversary of the 4-day Labor Day music and arts festival.

Folks around here say that the weather people fudge a bit to keep tourists away. Heh. Well, that didn't stop us at all. We just carried our little umbrella with us, just in case.

Our first touristy stop: The Space Needle

And that's about as touristy as we got. We stopped by the EMP, but aren't planning to actually go in until maybe Tuesday.

Onto Bumbershoot:
The Rickshaw Orchestra is a band that jerry-rigged all instuments and computer gear onto bicycles. Some were actually playing real horns, but most were remotely played xylophones, drums, and whistles. Darryl followed them around on his scooter and bugged the conductor for geeky information. =}

Our next stop, after watching some short films, was Sister Spit, an alterna-feminist spoken word show with Michelle Tea, Sini Anderson, Beth Lisick, and Inga Muscio (found her last name!). Very empowering, very funny, very enlightening.

We missed the Bandaloop group -- acrobats who jump off the Space Needle and do artsy stuff or something, but we hope to catch them later on. (Don't worry, Mom, they don't ask for volunteers).

The last act we caught was Jonathan Richman. The paper described him as a comical troubador, but he's oh-so much more (he dances, too!). Some of you might rememember him from the movie, There's Something About Mary, as all the papers like to mention. Fun show to end the night.

So here's the pix:

Our room doesn't have a window - just a skylight.

Space Needle

MS Everywhere? :-P

Rickshaw Orchestra

Kennedy

MichelleTea and Sini Anderson

Beth Lisick

Inga

Marcie Blackman

Jonathan Richman rocks!