Fun With Colors

The Color Festival is all about good vibes.  Happy times.  Finding your inner peace through a celebration of color and cheer.

Or

for some people, it's about how hard and often you can sneak up to strangers and pelt them with a handful of powder and laugh and run away.

Some people just don't get zen.

S and I headed to Staten Island by way of Eddie's car service to celebrate with colored powder while wearing white.  We'd bought white shorts from Old Navy for eight bucks each and found old white shirts that would look better with color than they looked completely white.  The sky was a bit gray when we arrived, but while standing on line, the sun came out and a breeze came off the water, and it turned out to be the right kind of day to be outside, sharing the love.

We shared the love on line for a very long time since we'd bought tickets in advance while the people who were buying tickets at the door went right in without having to wait.  Umm, something seems wrong about that.  Also wrong was that we had to buy the colored powder.  So we paid for a ticket (we got a discount because I bought them early AND I bought them with my work email and with an edu email comes an extra discount because education is fundamental) and then we had to pay for powder and still wait on a long line to get in as well as a line to get the powder.  Note to Color Festival: if people buy tickets in advance, give them a free bag of powder and an express line.

Buying the powder was a little confusing since there were no signs for prices or for what you could purchase. When we got to the table through a crowd of people -- it was more of a mob than a line -- we saw that we could buy sunglasses (good for not getting color in your eyes), stickers, t-shirts, and other trinkets.  We bought just the powder.

We also tried on flip flops to get a chance to win flip flops.  Neither of us won a pair.

There was free yoga all day, so S and I did some.  When down dog came along, S was out.  Short shorts and a pose that's ass-up is not her thing.  In a few minutes, I tapped out, too, having not done a full yoga session since Speedy Baddriverson bashed up my back real bad.

There were garbage bins everywhere!

Music is supposed to be a key part of Color Festival, and so several acts were lined up during the day with an MC between each who seemed to be preoccupied with two things: getting people to throw their colored powder on him and getting people to clean up after themselves.  Later on, I saw him picking up the powder wrappers people had thrown on the grass.  People?  Are lazy litterers.

When S and I ventured out onto the floor in front of the stage, we'd planned to start to throw powder at each other, but we had a difficult time opening our bags.  They were sealed shut with some type of super bag sealer and wouldn't open.  While we stood there, several people came by, suggesting we didn't have enough color.  Ha. Ha. Ha.  Clever.  And then?  Some little snot kid ran by and pelted me in the side of the head with a chock full of blue powder. He maniacally laughed and ran away.

And so began the string of encounters with assholes who did not quite grasp the concept of the Color Festival.  Am I an asshole for calling a little kid an asshole?  Nope.  Why not?  Here's why: an asshole is an asshole, no matter what age.  There were four guys, not children but who acted like children, who ran around all day, wrestling each other and angrily throwing powder and each other and other people, including me and S.  Here and there were the same kind of individuals or duos who clearly did not understand the difference between pretty celebration and blind rage.  So annoying.

Mango-flavored.  Delicious.

Also annoying was the advertisement for food and drinks as we could not bring our own. Their idea of food and drinks was a cart that sold water and Gatorade for thirst and potato chips for hunger.  The only stand that had a substantial choice was the yogurt drink stand, which is what S and I bought, and it was delish and somewhat filling.  The other vendor making a killing was the hot dog cart outside and across the street from the event.  Note to Color Festival: provide food and drink that is in tune with your advertising which includes a picture of a group of people standing at a stand with the word Kitchen above it, implying real food choices instead of stuff in a bag.

However, every half hour was the color launch, and while the MC was a bit perturbed at those of us in the back who went early a few times, the entire thing was really pretty to watch.  The first one we did when we were in the middle of it was a bit terrifying as we are a small people and when among a crowd of exuberant colored-powder throwers, we could get stomped on.  When all the colors launch at once, it's very pretty and then very mustard yellow.  We saw everything around us in one second and in the next, we couldn't see anything except what looked like settling smoke, and S said, this must be what it's like to witness a bomb going off, and I totally agreed. It was up my nose and in my mouth and then it got in my eye so I had to go off to the side and blink a lot to work it out of my contact.  Once we knew what it was like, however, we closed our eyes and danced around and let the powder fly.  I held my breath for as long as I could and then let it out as I left the center of the powder puff.  I'd brought wet wipes, so after we'd been covered with color, we wiped off and then we were coated a second time, so each time was a different pattern and hue.  At one point, I had so much powder on me, I looked furry and gray.  After wiping off, I was a blank canvas sans the stuff that stuck to my clothes.

Clean face

Blue face

After our first throw

After our last throw

Unfortunately, after hours in the sun, sweat started to kick in and that's when all colors ran together and started to turn brown.  S took out her baggie of contraband peanuts for snacking and she asked, do you want to stay the whole five hours?  Being that we'd witnesses and participated in several large color throws and had been subjected to the angry pelting several times as well, I was good with going on the ferry and heading home.

The ferry?  Is fabulous.  It was my first time on it and I loved every second of it.  Once we made it to the mainland, we got on the subway where inquiring minds wanted to know, What did you do today?  Refraining from responding with, Well, I did some laundry and then went for a walk, why do you ask?, I explained what the color festival was.  Some people asked if we did a color run, and I responded, something like that but with dancing rather than running.  S simply stopped answered people since all she does at work is small talk with strangers, and I took to just agreeing with whatever guess they had.

Pretty view right behind where the SI Yanks play

A view from the ferry.  Very exciting!

When I got home, I got undressed in the shower.  My scalp was caked with powder.  It was in my underwear.  It was in my ears. Best. Shower. Ever.  When I was finally clean, I looked at my phone and saw S had texted me a pic--she was back to normal as well!  As pretty as the colors had been, clean slate felt just as nice at the end of the day.

This just in....I've learned to use a shared stream on iCloud thanks to S, and so I now have all these new pics from her phone on my phone and computer.  Technology!

Is it me, or do I look doughy in this picture?

Clearly my finest hour

Ferry! Ferry!