Balloon Bling from the Busker Festival

Andrew and I finally hit up the Busker (or Street Performer) Festival in Edmonton. I incorrectly tweeted on Saturday that we'd been living in Edmonton for 4 1/2 years and hadn't managed to check it out until this weekend, but we've actually only been living in Alberta for 3 1/2 years. We walked down to Winston Churchill Square after dinner and caught a couple of acts, enjoyed some fried snacks and I got a fantastic balloon bling bracelet.

The first act we caught was a comedian, who described himself as a cross between Mick Jagger and Luke Skywalker. If you can imagine those two mixed together you can pretty much figure out what this guy looked like. His gimmick was that he caught a cabbage launched from a catapult on his head (while wearing a spiked helmet) but that only took up 2 minutes of the show. Mostly he told jokes whist having children race for a dollar (where the game is always the same and always fair) and bribing a couple to come up and answer yes/no questions about their relationship. Overall, he was pretty funny and displayed a lot of energy.

Having heard there was an acrobat show warming up, we immediately left the first preformer (once he was finished) for a dance/acrobat group. The troupe was made up of two men and a woman. The older of the two men, and the "leader" of the group reminded me a little of Al Pacino. The second, younger man was from Venezuela, had impressive guns and was a huge ham. The woman was very expressive and had clearly had ballet training (she was flexible and always pointed her toes, etc). They performed several choreographed numbers, some to music, some not, displaying strength and balancing moves. Toward the end of their time they performed an audience participation number during which the two younger cast members piled onto Al Pacino along with 3 young girls from the audience. They had to do it twice since they lost balance the first time.

After this performance we hit up the food vendors. Andrew picked up some fries and I went for a bag of mini doughnuts, or as we like to call them mini doughnus (Arrogant Worms concert). Then we joined in for the last 10-15 minutes of another comedian/musician/huge unicycle riding act. Once he was done the action seemed to lull a bit (it was 9:30). We checked out the balloon artist at work, it was impressive how fast he moved and how intricate his animals were. I kinda, sorta wanted a balloon, but I didn't know what kind of shape I would like and I didn't want a hat. Eventually Andrew convince me to get something. I ended up letting the balloon artist pick what.



We headed back after I received my balloon bracelet. The temperature was cooling off and I didn't want to be out too late. Andrew expressed an interest in returning next weekend to check out the "Midnight Madness" show on Saturday night. Our busker fun might not be over just yet.

Ciao,

Andrea