Thursday, September 21, 2017

Feast of San Gennaro 2017 - 91st annual!

The September rush at work carries on as it always does, with so much work piling up I don't know how I'm going to get through it, except that it always does and I always do, but last night I did manage to leave at a slightly less than heinous hour and decided to treat myself to some Italian street festival goodies at the 91st Annual Feast of San Gennaro. The stands for the festival run down several blocks of Mulberry Street starting right up near where I work, so it's really easy to just walk through a few blocks on my way to the Grand Street subway stations. I usually don't like big crowds but it's generally not too bad on one of the midweek evenings.

I got myself a braciole and a couple of zeppole (so happy to find a booth where they sell 'em individually for a dollar each, mostly they're sold in bags of 6 which is about 4 more than I need!), and stopped to listen to the live music that's always part of this event. Last night's group was The Devotions, good ol' doo-wop, people up swing dancing, seating area full of people bouncing to the beat, I could just feel the day's stress sloughing away in the fun atmosphere. Great stuff.


I listened for a couple of songs and then started off for the subway station, thinking "Well, that was fun, too bad I don't have my camera", when I suddenly realized that I did! TQ and I had met some old friends of my family at the Tenement Museum on Monday, and of course I'd brought my camera for that, but then it turned out that they didn't allow photography inside. I'd taken a few outside but hadn't rushed to get them onto my home computer the way I usually do, so the camera was still in the bag and charged. So, about face, and once more into the breach dear friends once more! This time I was mostly about getting some good photos without being all night about it (Tuesday night was a very late one at work and I was tired), but of course one of the lovely ladies at the Ferrara's booth was so nice about my picture taking I ended up getting a cannoli too. Delicious!

Funny thing too about having just been to the Tenement Museum -- I always enjoy the Feast, but I actually think that I enjoyed it more than usual this year with all of the immigrant stories from the museum in mind. According to the history page on Sangennaro.org, the festival celebrates the patron saint of the city of Naples , and was begun by immigrants newly arrived from that city in 1926 who wanted to continue the tradition they'd always followed in Italy. Amazing the way the tradition took root here and grew -- I bet those original immigrants would've been proud.


 And here are the photos I went back for. Enjoy! Click for a slideshow view. 



2 comments:

Antionette Blake said...

So glad that you had your camera because these photos are great and it was a perfect way to end the day.

bonnie said...

Thanks! The Feast is always fun for picture-taking, everything's very bright and colorful and people are enjoying themselves. I've so far resisted joining the smartphone era, got a simple old-school "candy bar" type phone mostly for use when travelling but have my own reasons for wanting to stop at that - however the having a camera on me all the time would be fun!

This time I was lucky! :)