Holiday Street Fair

The Fourth Avenue Street Fair is a Tucson icon. It happens twice a year - a few weeks before Christmas and again in the spring in a funky neighborhood within sight of downtown. Even though Melinda worked last night, we went down this morning early as soon as they opened at 9:30 at least to make our annual run to Antigone Books to get our Christmas cards.

We've never seen it so deserted! Normally you are shoulder-to-shoulder with the masses, but because of the early hour, we had the place to ourselves. Besides the vendors selling any sort of crafts you can name(half a mile of 4th avenue is blocked off for vendors!), the usual suspects of oddball stores take part too. This is the first time I've seen the Moai statue, moved from a miniature golf location to a bar on 4th Ave. There is also a "Sky Bar" astronomy themed tavern along the street with a telescope to beam in images from the roof.

The fair pulls in the eccentrics too. With the crowd you get all kinds of panhandlers, street musicians, street people, punks and goths - a real human zoo. No oddballs at the early hour, though we did see a well-dressed pit bull waiting patiently for it's owner to finish shopping.



Nothing struck our fancy that we had to buy, though the fellow who makes signs out of discarded license plates impressed me as quite the entrepreneur and was attracting our interest at least. Get your raw materials for nothing, and sell the finished product after a few minutes work for big bucks! Glass ware, paintings, leather work, sculpture, food and entertainment is all there, as well as stuff you can't even imagine. It is always a lot of fun except for dealing with crowds, and should be on your bucket list if in town when it is going on.