Weird local festivals and events

[Melooon]

There has been major drama in local news recently because the Puck King had to be removed from his cage early due to high temperatures!

Background: Every year a wild goat is captured and crowned the Puck King (Goat King) by a local virgin (Puck Queen) and hung in a cage in a town center for a weekend for the Puck Fair (A street party and market where many goods are traded). No one is really sure why this happens, but its been occurring for at least 500 years but probably goes back another 1000. All n all its a great time if you enjoy fairs and king goats.

(Image shows Puck King being crowned in the 1980s)

I suppose there must be many strange fairs out there, and maybe we should start a few weird web-fairs. Are there any unusual events near you?

[DJoftheCoven]

I know you posted this a while ago, but I felt the need to pitch in with something. About a month ago, I moved from a pretty drab/kind of dangerous city, and the festivals and stuff that we used to have over there were crazy. Any time one of the notoriously racist-ass local cops got pranked or shot on our street people would go outside and set off fireworks, play music, and grill with their families. Kind of morbid but pretty fun when you're used to American gun violence. Local punk bands played at the skate park after midnight about once a month, and during dia de los muertos there would be mariachi bands outside and people throwing calendulas (marigolds) everywhere.

Now that I live in San Francisco, most of the festivals I attend are pretty tame in comparison lol. but at least Chinatown has some pretty cool festivals during the autumn moon (which is tonight actually) and lunar new year

[Melooon]

pranked or shot

That escalated quickly!!! You should totally write about that though because places change and in 50 years that experience could be so different of people living on the same streets. It sounds like fun; I find SF very uptight and way overpriced but it's still a great city, I guess its touristy but Musee Mecanique is one of my favorite places ever!

When I was a toddler we lived in Barcelona for a while and kids used to have firework parties in the streets (fireworks are illegal even for adults in Ireland ) Iv not been back but I know that city is like another world now compared to how it was just 25 years ago!

[DJoftheCoven]

You're right that this place is overpriced, haha. Luckily there are little corners that locals know about for cheap groceries/food/what have you, and it's easy to get deals if you make friends with small business owners here. Everyone in SF is so used to tourists that just seeing me twice a week is enough for some of the shop owners to give me discounts .

At least one thing I can say this place is good for (MUCH better than my old city) is that there's just so much beautiful architecture/interesting scenery!! I'm a bit of a hobby photographer so it's like a dream come true for me

here's a pic I took yesterday while wandering around:


And because I mentioned the autumn moon festival, I did attend shortly after posting earlier. It was so much fun seeing the dragon dances in person. The shot that I got of the parade was probably not my best photography work, but I tried to capture the moment as best I could. I climbed halfway up a building to get it.



Also, it's really cool that you lived in Barcelona! I've never actually traveled outside of the US, but I hear it's absolutely lovely there.

[Memory]

The village I was born in has some fun quirks.

It's, by all means, nothing special.



But behind that mundane facade is not only a malfunctioning nuclear reactor that you could see from the house I grew up in (the scandal that was its end was gross mishandling of the technology, leading to several magnitudes of cancer rates, huge corporate coverups, plus a school kid literally finding little Thorium balls lying around in the grass during a class project; read https://www.reaktorpleite.de/ with a translator if you want more info), no, that is not all our little village is hiding.



No, not only that! It was also some years ago that a Hindu priest took our village's highway exit by accident and finally thought he reached the holy land, and decided to buy a plot in the middle of our dull industrial quarters for a gigantic Hindu temple; and thus, the Sri Kamadchi Ampal temple was born, the at the time biggest Dravidian temple in the entirety of Europe.




Every year, TENS OF THOUSANDS of people come here from the entire world to partake in their annual celebration, involving the entire otherwise-completely-mundane village.
They even declared our industrial coal barge canal their holy river to perform washings in.



It's beautiful and always a joy being around these wonderful people. It's also super, super bizarre, because this is a random-ass village in Germany without any real redeeming qualities otherwise.

[Swiftpaw]

I live in Florida and here there's a festival each year where pirates kidnap the mayor in honor of a real world pirate who used to sail around Florida. Down here they sail in a whole pirate ship for it and other people with boats sail out to "defend" the city, and the pirates eventually surrender. I've never actually attended an event because it's a bit too far for me but it looks like fun!

[debleb]

In my area (and I think the whole country?) there's a tradition of jumping off the pier into the ocean on New Year's Day. I don't quite see the appeal but maybe I'll try it some day! I think they might do it for charity sometimes, but seems to me they'd keep on doing it even if it wasn't.

[SilkSkull]

I've been waiting for this, so in newfoundland there is a tradition called a "Screech In" and it is basically a way that a person that isn't from newfoundland can become a proper local, basically you take a shot of Screech (40% liquor), reciting a short speech and then kissing a Cod, sometimes you also eat a piece of baloney after the shot. It is one of my favorites to tell people about and while not a festival, it is a longtime tradition that has made for many drunken laughs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newfoundland_Screech

[Cele]

In my town we have Kekri celebration on the first Saturday of November, the remnants of the old harvest festival. Big goat is built out of straw and transported to the middle of the river. People gather on the shores to watch as it is lit on fire and it burns down. There are stands of people selling their crafts and carts selling street food and warm soup & drinks. I know a few other towns have since picked up the goat burning, but I'm pretty sure we started this. And no, this has nothing to do with the Gävle goat.

Vimeo embed doesn't seem to be working. Well here is what I tried to embed.

[HayleyMulch]

There has been major drama in local news recently because the Puck King had to be removed from his cage early due to high temperatures!

Background: Every year a wild goat is captured and crowned the Puck King (Goat King) by a local virgin (Puck Queen) and hung in a cage in a town center for a weekend for the Puck Fair (A street party and market where many goods are traded). No one is really sure why this happens, but its been occurring for at least 500 years but probably goes back another 1000. All n all its a great time if you enjoy fairs and king goats.

(Image shows Puck King being crowned in the 1980s)

I suppose there must be many strange fairs out there, and maybe we should start a few weird web-fairs. Are there any unusual events near you?

I am so glad you brought this festival up because... god almighty, I don't know how I've been alive on this tiny island for over 29 years and I only first heard of this Puck Fair THIS year.

I sadly can't think of any other event or festival that 'weird' here per se. A cool local one here is The Dragon Of Shandon.

[Corrupted Unicorn]

Here we bring all our pets to be blessed by the priest at a certain time of the year. You see long queues of cats, dogs, birds in cages, hamsters/guinea pigs, and sometimes you spot "rarer" pets like ferrets or miniature pigs.

There's also a special time for horses to be blessed (bigger, might scare other animals), so they go on a parade/queue of their own. I love seeing them (I love horses), and sometimes you can see mules, tiny horses, and horses with hats (I love those!).

After that, you get a goodie bag that often includes a bag of rice, carob beans, anise bread, and recently, discounts for the local vet/pet supplies store.

I've also heard a story about a kid who had no pets so he caught an ant and tried to get it blessed by the priest I wonder if I could pull off something similar with a Tamagotchi.

By the way, can our virtual pets get "blessed"? You mentioned web-fairs, and I agree we need more of those. Who's up for some brainstorming?

[Janus]

I've been waiting for this, so in newfoundland there is a tradition called a "Screech In" and it is basically a way that a person that isn't from newfoundland can become a proper local, basically you take a shot of Screech (40% liquor), reciting a short speech and then kissing a Cod, sometimes you also eat a piece of baloney after the shot. It is one of my favorites to tell people about and while not a festival, it is a longtime tradition that has made for many drunken laughs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newfoundland_Screech

I was probably conceived in Newfoundland, this is great! Thanks for the fascinating share

[Melooon]

By the way, can our virtual pets get "blessed"? You mentioned web-fairs, and I agree we need more of those. Who's up for some brainstorming?

This is a cool idea! Someone could totally create a page that lets you uploaded an image or something and it gets blessed (maybe some visual effect is applied) and returned to you 

[SilkSkull]

This is a cool idea! Someone could totally create a page that lets you uploaded an image or something and it gets blessed (maybe some visual effect is applied) and returned to you

I so wanna do this now!

[appleAlc]

 I do not know too much about it, but I know there's a Kudzu festival near me, like dedicated to preparation of it as food, etc. I think it had the tagline "Eating the Vine That Ate the South" or something to that end. I think it was in September; I'll have to see about going this year!