Dave Alpert: I Know Where You’re Going with That

Festivals in Somerville and Cambridge, MA are generally a really fun hang.  This year, I missed Honk! Fest in Davis Square  on Saturday but managed to make it out to Oktoberfest in Harvard Sq on Sunday, October 11.  Being at Oktoberfest made me regret missing Honk!.  Fortunately, many of the same artists were performing there as well, so I did manage to catch a few bands.  Unfortunately, in general, Oktoberfest was a mess of parents pushing around crying babies, overpriced felafel sandwiches and cheesy beer gardens that were policed like federal prisons.

Here’s a shot from Church St and Mass Ave:

That big pink tent on the left is a Dunkin Donuts truck doling out free samples of coffee drinks and then a Nantucket Nectars stand, so between the two, I got a little “juiced up”.  The scene was mainly people selling shit with a few political activists sprinkled in for good measure.  There were some street performers like pogo stick daredevils and stilt-walkers as well. 

Strangely, I ran into a friend at the local coffee shop on Saturday who asked if I was going to Honk!  Not sure, I asked if he was going.  He told me he was torn because last year, when he was broken up with his girlfriend, she ran off and slept with a stilt-walker.  Every time I passed one of them in the crowd, I couldn’t help but wonder if it was the guy.

Honk! bands are self-described as “activist street bands”.  You can read more about them here.  Anyway, here’s one of the Honk! bands I saw:

I think this band is called Minor Mishap Marching Band, but since their uniform is pretty close to that of the band before them called the Yellow Hat Band (in the background), it was a little hard to tell.  This was a “minor mishap”, however.  Both bands were a lot of fun.

Later that night, I stopped into the Burren in Davis Sq to see my buddy Tim play in his Americana Session.  If you’ve never checked it out, they play every Sunday from 7:30-9:30pm in the front room.  It is very laid back, a fun hang–and free.  In any event, this Minor Mishap band member wandered in at one point and sat in with the band:

I heart this town!

This entry was posted on Monday, October 12th, 2009 at 2:47 pm and is filed under City Life, Music, Culture, Drinking, Cambridge/Somerville. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.