JP World’s Fair

Yesterday, Esther, Rachele, and I attented the Jamaica Plain World’s Fair. This is an annual street party in our former neighborhood (just a couple miles from where we live now). Lots of street vendors, live music, arts and crafts, and people dancing in the streets.

This Latin/African diaspora band, zili roots, was great:

You’ll notice that Turkey Hill, the provider of the cow, had a big presence at the festival. We also got a huge plate of Indian food from India Palace for $3:

Unfortunately, most of the food is obscured by the chappatis, but rest assured there was a lot of it. My daughter Esther slept through the whole thing:

Toward the end, I saw a dreadlocked Jamaican Rastafarian driving a big van who needed to get past a road block into the pedestrian area. A crew-cut Boston cop approached the van, and I was bracing myself for racial profiling and intense scrutiny. I was pleasantly surprised when the cop just waved the guy on after he indicated where he was headed.

This is what I like so much about Jamaica Plain—it’s as progressive as any of the more lefty areas of the country (Ann Arbor, Madison, Berkeley), but quite racially and socioeconomically diverse.

(By the way, if you’d like to see more photos of Esther, drop me a line—she has her own blog but I decided to keep it out of public scrutiny, at least until she’s old enough to decide for herself).

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