International Festival

Those of you who know me have heard me bitching about the International Festival in Tower Grove Park. In past years it has been noisy and attracted rude people to the neighborhood. The first three or four years of the festival, I was rudely awakened early Sunday morning with gospel music blaring from speakers pointed directly at my house. We're talking 8am here, a time when sensible people are polite about the possibility of hangovers. The year before last, one of the residents on the block actually walked over there and asked them to turn it down, which they did. But, that year and last year, a stage sat where it's sound system pointed toward the houses, and we were treated to excessively amplified music and DJ's of varying quality [mostly, the quality of the music varied, the DJ was annoying every time he stuck a mic up to his mouth].
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This year, to my great surprise and pleasure, the stages were set up in a manner similar to Pridefest, oriented to the long axis of the park, and the Scottish Games were set up in a lawn where they were visible from the porch [hate me if you want, ladies]. Quieter activities were placed closest to the houses, and the noise was kept well away. It was nice, and it was a better distribution of the heavy crowd, tho they should work on some of those bottlenecks in the food row. Attendees were more respectful of the neighborhood, too. We've had less litter [one year a woman left a dirty diaper on the sidewalk], and the only cars parked collision-close were apparently vendors or International Institute staff, because they've been bumper-to-bumper all day. This year was the largest I've seen it, and the beautiful weather brought out a huge crowd. The rude people were still there, but they were more outnumbered than usual.
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My dear friend Sue and I started the day with brunch at MoKaBe's, then walked up to Cheap TRX [web page under construction] before heading back to the park. You might want to sit down for this... cars turning from Grand to Arsenal actually stopped for pedestrians [I know, unbelievable; I'll make a video next year]. We had a great time and are looking forward to next year.
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Looking forward to International Festival; something I always hoped for but feared never would happen...