Dallas / Fort Worth and Me

Once more into the breach, dear friends, and I’ll be done with my report on Ye Olde Scarborough Renaissance Festival. While the bulk of this particular entry will be devoted to photos (primarily from the Grande Parade), there are a few more things I’d like to point out.

One thing you’ll need to check out is the glassmaking exhibit, which (much to my irritation) I was unable to get any decent pictures of.  This blurry image of the glassblower rolling a molten blob of glass is about the best I could do. The pictures of everything else — including the roaring furnaces — didn’t really come out.

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When I last left you, Gentle Reader, I hadn’t finished talking about the wonders of Scarborough Faire — the yearly Renaissance Festival currently underway outside of Waxahachie, which is about 25 miles south of DFW. This is a great festival to visit. It’s a lot cheaper, admittance-wise, than most amusement parks, and it’s at least as much fun. Especially if you like such things as turtle races and falconry demonstration shows.

Speaking of falconry, the Royal Falconer was giving quite the demonstration about the time we walked in, and I was most impressed.

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Are you going to Scarborough Faire?

No, Paul and Art, I already did. On April 20, I had the opportunity to visit my very first Renaissance Festival — in this case Scarborough Faire, a great big festival located on permanent grounds just outside of Waxahachie, Texas.

Now, back when I was a lad, “the Renaissance Festival” meant the Texas Renaissance Festival, the one that’s been held down south in Plantersville since ‘74. I never got to go to that one, and I never even knew that Scarborough existed until a few years ago. Turns out that it’s the North Texas answer to the RenFaire I grew up with. This one’s been going on since 1981, and is set in the year 1533, during the reign of England’s King Henry VIII. In fact, if I’m not mistaken, this is he with his queen-of-the-moment.

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 There’s an oddly provocative castle plunked down on the edge of downtown Dallas — right next to one of our main arteries, Interstate Highway 35 — where all and sundry can see it. It’s called Medieval Times, and while the prices inside are straight out of the 21^st century, the goings-on are positively, well, medieval. So hey, if you want to get medieval on someone’s butt-tocks (as a brilliant Forrest Gump parody of Pulp Fiction once put it), this is the place to do it.

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 I recently paid a visit to Addison’s Out of the Loop Festival, which is held yearly at the Water Tower Theater at the Addison Theater Centre; this year it took place from March 6-16. To be honest, it wasn’t quite what I expected; I knew there would be art, music, and theater performances, but I figured there would also be booths, food to be purchased, and maybe even games. But the closest thing to a booth was the table where the Girl Scouts were selling their cookies out front. Well, I’ve always been a fan of Girl Scout cookies, so I bought three boxes. They’re expensive this year — $3.50 per box. But wonderful as always, despite the fact that I couldn’t eat many, due to my diabetes.

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Downtown Ft. Worth has many things to recommend it, but one of the most majestic is the beautiful Bass Performance Hall.

Located in historic Sundance Square, just across the street from the famous Flying Saucer Pub, the Nancy Lee and Perry R. Bass Performance Hall Complex (as it’s officially known) takes up the entire block bound by Calhoun, Commerce, 4th and 5th streets. It’s described in its literature as “the crowning jewel of a city which boasts the nation’s third largest cultural district,” and yes, it definitely is that. Poor Dallas; compared to Ft. Worth, the Big D’s pretty much a cultural backwater, and the existence of the Bass — which would not be out of place in New York or the Continent, incidentally — just makes it all the more obvious.

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