Dragons and Beer

This past saturday, August 23rd was a culture day, albiet a late start culture day. The plan was to check out the Dragon Boat races. Gave Derek a call and didn’t end up at Ala Moana until noon. This year’s event was rather ill publicized and I would never have known about it, and it seems neither did anyone else. The park was filled with a usual weekend end of summer crowd. When I got to the center area, other than participants there didn’t seem to be anyone else there for the races. It was lunch break time so nothing was going on at the moment. I decided to stroll on down to McCoy Pavillion where the Greek Festival, which I did know about from radio spots and print media.

There was an entrance fee, but it was a nominal $3, less than a fancy cup o coffee. Not having had lunch yet, I did the circuit to see what offerings there were. Not a big variety, but some pretty tasty looking stuff, and I’d been spying people walking around with bottles that looked an aweful lot like beer. Mmmm, beer, at Ala Moana park, legally. Hadn’t heard back from D yet, & I’m pretty starved. Got myself a pork slouvaki with piece of pita and a Hillas Greek beer. Mmm, tasty, refreshing, cheap buzz! I was quickly feeling in quite a good mood. The beer was a bit on hoppy side, but I could easily deal with that.

D buzzed when I was about halfway through my stick o meat tidbits. Told him what I was up to, and the lure of beer was a powerful pull and he eventually found his way into the festival. The gyros were popular and the line never abated. Didn’t feel like standing in line, so I grabbed some Greek rice nugget thingies. Grape leaves wrapped around prepared rice, name escapes me. These were also pretty tasty. And yes, that’s another beer.

The atmosphere of the festival is pretty nice, the McCoy Pavillion is a pretty good venue for it, it has an appropriate feel with the courtyard. Size keeps in pretty intimate, but if it grows any larger than it’ll prob need to move out somewhere, just as the Okinawa festival did. The trays of philo pastries were tempting, but crowded, and our main focus was the Dragon Boat races, so we headed out.

We were in time for the semi-finals, and down to the finals, the teams were fairly hardcore, but also having fun. Beautiful out, couldn’t have asked for a better day for this colorful event out on the water. I leave it to D to explain the story behind these races, I know nothing about it.

Finished the day off with another large beer and munchies at Islands Burger in Ala Moana Shopping Center. Yes, I paid for all this later with a headache which I’m sure was from beer replacing water, but it was a good day.