One thing I love about Boise is, there is almost always something going one. There's First Thursdays, Alive After Five, Art in the Park, and the countless beer and food festivals to numerous to name, all of which, are free.
The Boise Curb Cup is the newest addition. It is a street performer fair so to speak. Performers lined up to perform their talent in the Boise heat for two hours. Patrons were given a certain amount of tokens to stash in their pockets and as they walked and enjoyed the wide range of performances and if they liked one they could deposit a token or two in the groups basket. At the end of the two hours, tokens were counted up and the one with the most wins. Sounds easy, right?
When this event was planned, they made room for a total of 50 performers stretching down 8th street from Bodo to Bannock as well as about 1000 patrons within the 2 hours.Heres the another thing about Boise I love.... they support the arts, and they love to be outside... and given the opportunity to do both, its a sure winner. The event drew 120 performance entries ranging from musicians to dancers to artists to jumpropers. In addition to the 120 groups performing, there was a massive 15,000 people down town to check it out, Matt and I included. I LOVE the idea. Because there were so many people crammed within 3 city blocks, not everyone got tokens to vote, which was fine with me simply because we couldn't navigate our way through the crowds well enough to enjoy each group. Another issue, with so many people performing, they had bands, on top of bands, on top of bands... no one could hear themselves, we couldn't hear one group above another and well, when the bag pipers were going, nobody could hear anything. Police ended up having to call in back up and closed 3 streets down town to accomodate the crowd.
Like I said before, we both LOVED the idea, and watching people from all walks of life doing what they love was inspiring. It was for the teachers who secretly love to dance. The high school kids with huge aspirations of making it big, the secretary who enjoys playing in the gypsy band on the weekends, the 70 something guy who has been playing the banjo since he was a kid, the 60 year old who recently found a love of dancing... I can't say enough how cool it was. This year was a learning experience. They have already started the planning process for next year, and I,for one, cannot wait!!
The fifteen year old song writers... I loved their stage, very inventive.
There arent enough words for these guys... I wasn't really paying attention to their music.
Funny guys, pretty good "magicians"
Phenominal... middle eastern band. They had a belly dancer in front of them too.
Our friend John's band, he is the guy in the white shirt and cowboy hat.
These guys were playing old Jazz standards... L-O-V-E-D them...
Graffiti artists
