Have Toddler, Will (Super)Crawl

We sure had a good dose of fall weather today! As we inaugurated the fall soccer season at Soccer World on Frid, it was raining in sheets. Not exactly the kind of thing you want to see when your afternoon plans include a huge street festival...

Still, we kept faith in the CBC forecast of brighter skies for the afternoon and trained an eye to the window now and again. All was not in vain as I was able to get a bit of a head start on my weekly cooking while the boy napped.

Oven roasted Pingue pancetta

Eventually, the skies broke, the sun peeked out and we loaded the family hauler en route to Supercrawl. We got an amazing parking spot and rolled on down (up?) James Street.

Ready to crawl

We visited the Lister Block and Juno House. We took in as many of the art installations as possible (loved the dayglo bears and the chrome porta-potties!) as we chugged further north.

Art!

As we neared the Hamilton Community Foundation/Exclaim! stage, the ground started to rumble. I checked the Festival Guide: Jessy Lanza. What?!? Now here was a piece of serendipity!

In case you haven't heard, Jessy Lanza may be the biggest deal to come out of Hamilton since... um, a long time (all apologies Arkells).

Jessy Lanza made the ground shake

Nominated for this year's Polaris prize, she is, to me, a genius. And to find her out on James Street, by chance, in the middle of the day was a great gift. You can learn and hear more about her on her Q segment: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/hamilton/news/listen-musician-jessy-lanza-talks-hamilton-performs-on-q-1.2493592

It was a flawless set.

Having learned our lesson at the Harvest Picnic, we were sure to bring the boy's earmuffs. I think I might drop a note to the Supercrawl organizers to suggest putting them up for sale next year. We could have sold ours to other parents a few times over.

Happy Junior Crawler

I also got to see the new Cannon Street cycle-track. This is the longest protected bike lane in Ontario (maybe Canada...) and it opened on Friday to coincide with Supercrawl. 

Zoom!

Finally, we dug into some of the food trucks. There were so many there that it was honestly very difficult to decide what to have for dinner. After much toing and froing, I eventually opted to go with some octopus tacos from the Buster's Sea Cove truck. In a word, they were epic - possibly the most tender tentacles we've ever had. Yum!

I accidentally took a bite before I remembered to take the pic.

Great day, great fun, great festival!