Grand Avenue Festival: Saturday 11 - 5

My wife, 2-year old daughter and I checked out the Grand Avenue Festival on Saturday. We quite enjoyed it, even though we didn't see and do everything. I wish I'd had some money to pick up some art. The Gallery Row exhibitors had some really good work on display. (Of course, there was some not so good work, too.)

I was pleased to see work on Angels Flight is really coming along. It looks like work on the engineering side is underway. Someone from the Conservancy was on hand and they said the railway might be up and running by the end of the year. That's the earliest date I've heard. The return of Angels Flight can't come soon enough.

I hadn't been to the Colbourne School in a few years. It is a very beautiful building in its own understated way. It was cool to see the model of the project when it is completed. There's also a gorgeous mobil in the stairwell of the main lobby.

We checked out the booth for the Grand Avenue redevelopment project. They didn't have any maps we could take with us. But, the model looked good. I keep hoping they'll demolish the very ugly buildings adjacent to the park. Apparently, it depends on earthquake issues more than anything.

We finally got to see the inside of Disney Hall. We've spent a lot of time in the park on the roof. So it was fun to see the interior of the building. Throughout the day, there were mini-concerts of about 30 minutes each. We took in one of the organ recitals and we enjoyed it a lot. However, during the performance, my daughter fell asleep and it was time for us to head home.

We look forward to the event next year. My wife, who is Mexican, made an interesting comment. "Oh, this is Fiesta Broadway for gringos." Of course, it was a little less raucous than that event. Still, we had fun.

the guy who is heading up the angels flight redevelopment dropped by the conservancy booth while i was there, and from what he said it sounds on track to reopen early next year.

i posted some photos from the festival.

i don't know that the comparison between fiesta broadway and the grand avenue festival is apt. my impression of fiesta broadway has just been of a bunch of mega-corporations setting up booths and giving away crap. grand avenue festival has a much more local flavor, and had a lot more activities going on. it also doesn't draw nearly the same size of crowd, of course.