BURKARD'S BLOG
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26 JUL 03: SLUGGISH TIMES?
Friday marked the 30th anniversary of the Columbus Times "Summerfest," and my first time visiting the event in person. It obviously was created for a growing, busy city - because you could have experienced everything in about 15 minutes.
The Liberty Theatre was less than half-full, when I walked into Summerfest at about 2:45 p.m. It was NOT a packed house, and parking wasn't that difficult to find. Of course, I made sure I didn't park in front of Chuck's Bonding Company - because those web-cam jokers can start the strangest rumors.
Summerfest featured several different talent contests. When I stopped to look in, a little girl was walking back and forth on stage wearing a T-shirt, jeans and bright-white tennis shoes. Either this was a contestant in the "Miss Summerfest" pageant, or the new fashions this fall are going to be quite ordinary.
Moving to our left from the auditorium, we found the "Summerfest Health Fair." It consisted of a grand total of four tables, two of them staffed - and three of them with excellent opportunities to pick up free ink pens.
One of the staffed tables offered surveys on chiropractic care. I'll never forget the church deacon in Atlanta years ago, who kept pronouncing it "Choir Practice" - and baffled an entire speaking club.
The other staffed table actually offered a health test - consisting of a blood pressure check. "We were going to do cholesterol screenings, but we decided not to," a woman explained. She must have read the line in the flyer about a chili-cooking contest, too.
The strange thing was that NO chili or dessert cooking was going on while I was at Summerfest. I found three hot dogs in a pan, cooked who-knows-how-long ago. I didn't take one - since the health fair didn't have botulism testing.
The only dessert to be found inside Summerfest was a couple of trays of Little Debbie snack cakes. We should note this was at 2:45 p.m. - so maybe a big crowd gobbled down everything at the 1:00 opening time, then went back to their Government Center jobs.
Booths were offered to organizations and businesses for Summerfest. But other than the health tables, the only "booth" I saw was a table with WRBL pencils and refrigerator magnets. How amazed I was to find none of the magnets had Blaine Stewart's picture on them.
All these years I was led to think Summerfest was a big event in the local African-American community. Yet the turnout seemed so small that a Hispanic community event back in March might as well have been a state fair.
Maybe it was a matter of bad timing this year - as Summerfest fell on the same day as an Ohio Players concert at the Civic Center. The lack of radio stations at Summerfest seemed to show what THEIR priority was....
Now for some other things we saw, read and heard while out and about on a summer weekend:
+ The Ledger-Enquirer reported Jeff Foxworthy and his wife have bought 2,000 acres of land in Harris County. To borrow from his own TV commercial - give it a ZIP code!
(Jeff Foxworthy reportedly will use all that Harris County land as a "hunting preserve." As in hunting for new material, we presume....)
+ The Rich's-Macy*s store at Peachtree Mall is selling "Moments," an album of traditional "American music" - and one of the tunes is "Dixie." Do African-American groups not care about these things anymore? Or is it what I suspect - nobody's buying the album, so nobody's noticed it?
(To make things worse, two songs on the "American music" CD as Rich's-Macy*s feature the "Dixieland Stompers" - only it's misspelled "Dixeland" twice! Yes sir, education is what made our country so great.)
+ Memo to the Hardee's on Airport Thruway: Why are you calling it a "new pork chop biscuit" when your restaurant has sold these things at least twice before? Is it "new" because you slaughtered a different pig?
+ A giant new billboard on South Lumpkin Road declares: "Saturday is God's Day! Sunday Laws = Mark of the Beast!" What's going on here? Was all the billboard space in Phenix City taken?
+ The Columbus Wardogs lost to Florida, and finished the season again at 4-12. If this arena football team winds up moving to Albany, the Civic Center turf will look great in the new Cottonmouth coach's office.
+ We spotted an old man pushing a junk-filled shopping cart on the corner of 12th and Veterans Parkway. We think we've seen this man in other parts of town - and sooner or later, he'll find that open flea market.
(BLOG-BLAH-BLAH: If you spot this man or a lookalike pushing a similar cart around Columbus, please write us with a location - as we'd like to track their progress.)
PAIN-O-RAMA: Nine pains Friday, but only ONE Saturday -- as my jaw's been hurting most of the day. Do you think all the other aches decided to merge?