Cleveland's Wonderful Street Fares or How To Get Fat And Really Enjoy The Process

     Page Ninety.
     Summer is upon us and here in Cleveland that means many things. Birds are singing, flowers are blooming, people are outside jogging and most importantly, neighborhood festival time is here! Cleveland has some glorious neighborhood festivals with their multitudes of sights and sounds. Young artists are out selling their wares and street musicians are walking around, entertaining passers-by. In theory every one of our street fairs exists for some cerebral reason, whether it be religious, cultural, ethnic or what have you. But really, these street fairs exist just to feed the masses.
     Cleveland is widely known to have very strong ethnic food. This is because we attracted so many immigrants from the early-1800's to the mid-1900's. Cleveland has no history of being white bread, vanilla or Presbytarian. People nowadays don't know that from the 1880's through the 1970's Cleveland was one of the ten largest cities in America and it attracted a more diverse immigrant community than practically any other inland American town. Honestly, I don't know why it attracted such an array of nationalities, but it did. Cleveland has 'em all... and their food. All the usual suspects have their Mom & Pop restaurants or grocery stores here (we strongly poo-poo national chain food in Cleveland. It's here, but we don't really like it.): Chinese, Japanese, Thai, Italian, French, Mexican, Jewish, African-American, etc, they're all here. Now, the thing is, we also have: Ethiopian food, Hungarian, German, Vietnamese, Indian, Lebanese, Spanish, Russian, every South or Central American culture and  all things in between and really good versions of them, too. In short, if you want great ethnic food, come to Cleveland. (Unfortunately, we have a severe shortage of 5 star restaurants of any variety. But we have more than our share of terrific ethnic eateries which serve any world food you could possibly want.)
     Which brings me back to our street fairs.

                                                                   Oh My God, Is The Food Good!!!

     I'll tell you my favorite Cleveland festival. It's the Feast of the Assumption in Little Italy. The Feast of the Assumption, celebrated on August 15th, is the day that devout Catholics believe Mary was assumed up into heaven. Cleveland's Italian community adopted this day to create Cleveland's largest festival, literally. It gets about 1/3 of a million attendees over the four day party and they're all really happy. It's also the only Feast of the Assumption with a party of this nature in the world. Weird but true. And the Italian food isn't to be believed. It's overpriced, of course. But who cares? I typically attend, maybe, three or four times each year. It's in Little Italy which is a ten minute walk from me. So I walk down Mayfield Hill to Little Italy, get lunch, then walk back up the hill and come home. But more importantly, I usually go down on Saturday night with friends and hang out for a few hours. It's just one of those annual get-togethers that I really enjoy.
     The reason I have street festivals on my mind right now is because the season just began a week ago. The first one, The Hessler Street Fair, is also located very near me. It's in University Circle which is the cultural hub of Cleveland. The Cleveland Clinic, University Hospitals of Cleveland, Case Western Reserve University, The Cleveland Museum of Art, The Cleveland Orchestra and a few dozen more cultural and educational institutions are all in this relatively small district. University Circle is also at the bottom of the hill. So I can walk down to Hessler (one of Cleveland's long-time artist colonies), look at all the art, get a bite, walk back up and go home. It's easy as pie. (All this walking is how I can rationalize eating so much crap.)
     So there you have it. I don't know the street fair situation of any other city but I certainly hope that it's rich, diverse and worth waiting for where you live. (I just wish they wouldn't charge a million dollars for a glass of fresh-squeezed lemon-aid.)