Dog Costumes for the Bark in the Park

Each year we have a huge gathering for dogs and their “parents” at the main downtown park, called the “Bark in the Park.” It is a huge event, with thousands of dogs in attendance. There are dozens of vendor tents and tables, selling everything from collars that glow in the dark to special shampoos. They also hold a huge, fun parade with dogs in costumes and lots of prizes for different categories, such as funniest, scariest, etc.

Last year when we went to th Bark in the Park we took our oldest female, as she is the most social. We didn’t enter her in the parade, as we didn’t know how she was going to react to being around all those other dogs and all those people, but she did great and I think she had as much fun as we did. So this year when we go back we want to find a great costume for her and dress her up to be in the parade.

The wife found a great site on the internet called “Costume Cauldron” that has hundreds of Halloween Costumes, including a great selection of pet costumes. This one is my favorite, the “watch dog”:

But the wife says it is too corney and she wants something a little more unusual. At the moment she is favoring the hula girl costume, as our dog loves to dance around on her back legs and we are thinking that would be a great gimmick for when we get in front of the judges stand, to play some hula or limbo music on a little boom box and get her to dance in her hula skirt outfit.

To add to the theme, the wife wants to get a hula costume from the same site for herself and a flower lei. That sounds like great fun and we’ll order them both now so we have them in plenty of time for the parade. The wife found a secret backdoor that gives people who know about it a great discount on costume orders. all you have to do is go to the website’s homepage, and look halfway down on the right side to click on the brown comma in the line that reads “Our store now has over 8,000 masquerade items . . .”

A Nice Stink

The wife has a funny saying that pops out every once in a while. When she smells something good that she really likes, she’ll announce, “That’s a nice stink!”

The first time I heard it I thought she was very weird. Well, maybe she is, but I love her anyways. But the story behind that saying is: when she was a very little girl and trying to learn the English language with all the subtle differences between similar words, she had heard her granny say on a Sunday drive that the smell of a dead skunk that they passed in the road was a “bad stink.” Then later that day, when they passed some honeysuckle on the side of the road, the wife (she must have been only 4 or 5 years old back then) announced that the fragrance from the honeysuckle was a “nice stink.” Of course, the whole car burst out in laughter at her mis-use of the word stink. And from then on it became a family joke and she still says it once in a while, bless her heart.

Taste of Chicago

This year’s Taste is the 28th annual - how about that for a long successful run? It has changed a lot from when it started, but it is a great street festival and we are looking forwarding to going again this summer.

The cost is only $8 for a strip of 12 food and drink tickets. All of the vendors are required to offer a taste for just 1 ticket, and then they can offer anything else they want for as many tickets as they want to charge. Last year the average food item cost 4 tickets and we bought 3 extra strips for just two of us to fully enjoy and sample everything we wanted to try.

We really liked several of the different foods and made note of which restaurants had the best food so we could patronize them later in the year. I even tried fried goat cheese for the first time - but I found it rather strong and don’t think I would order that again. I found one vendor selling key lime pie and jumped at the chance to have some, but what they served was absolutely AWFUL and nothing like the real southern key lime pie recipes taste like. But the variety of ethnic tastes was fantastic and one of the things that I love about Chicago - the international influence on everything there, with a solid core of Americana.

Sending the Crowds Home

I was wondering of this economic downturn was going to affect attendance at the CMA Music Festival this year and I just read a report in the Business Journal that this year’s attendance was a record crowd. We had an average of 52,000 music fans here each day, almost a 10% increase over last year.

I think the fact that the artists performing were some of the top acts helped draw a lot of people. The festival is an excellent entertainment value and the fans proved again that country music has the biggest loyal fan base of all the genres.

CMA Music Fest

If you live here, we don’t care that the name was changed to “CMA Music Fest.” To us, this week will always be “Fan Fair.” There are rock music festivals all over the U.S. every summer, like the infamous Bonnaroo and Lollapalooza. But this festival is about country music and the fans that buy the records and support their favorite singers and bands.

This is the week that the country music industry thanks their fans by posing for pictures, signing autographs, giving concerts in the clubs and stadiums all over town, and meeting with their fan clubs for picnics, bowling tournaments, and cruises down the Cumberland River. The other music industries don’t do anything even close to this week long festival, and we don’t care that the industry is trying to bring in non-country acts. That’s fine. But the jist of this week is that the country music artists give a little back to the fans. And that’s the way it SHOULD be.