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Weird local festivals and events

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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 :ha:

Melooon:

--- Quote ---pranked or shot
--- End quote ---
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 :tongue:) 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 :grin:.

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 :loved:

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.

Guest:
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.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=ZtnBWgc_jWo

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