Art-B-Que

When I was younger, I was all about going to festivals for the drinking holidays.  You know what I mean – St. Patrick’s Day, Cinco de Mayo, New Year’s Eve.  Now, while I’m certainly not opposed to celebrating those days, going to a crowded festival with a bunch of drunk 22 year olds is not really my idea of fun.  No offense to any drunk 22 year olds that might be reading.  A friend invited me and Jason to a Cinco de Mayo festival, but we decided that it would probably be a better choice not to go.

I write part of a Weekend Guide on my work blog.  It doesn’t have anything to do with the industry that I work in, but it’s the most fun post to write each week and it makes me feel really in the know about events going on in Atlanta each weekend.  So, instead of doing something specifically for Cinco de Mayo (although we did go to Raging Burrito for dinner), we decided to check out something that I’d written about on the work blog, and that seemed a bit more low-key, but still fun: Art-B-Que.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Atlanta has a TON of festivals in the late spring/early summer.  Some of them like the Dogwood Festival and the Inman Park Festival are really big, but this one was really small, it really only took up a few blocks.

Since it was a smaller festival, dogs were allowed so we brought the Murphster.  He got a lot of attention from other festival goers.

The theme of this festival was barbeque, if you couldn’t guess.  One of the things that I like the most about living in the Atlanta area is that there are almost always vegetarian options no matter where you go.  Jason asked what I’d eat at this festival, but I felt confident that I’d find something.  Or I’d just eat a popsicle.

Do you see what I see?  BBQ Tofu!  I don’t really eat BBQ ever, mostly because 99% of the time, it’s pork or beef.  I also don’t really love the taste of BBQ sauce, at least not the sweet, tomatoey kind.  But seeing as I’d never even heard of BBQ Tofu before, I had to try it.

It was good!  This came from Burnt Fork BBQ.  One of the owners is vegan, so they have several vegetarian and vegan dishes on their menu.  I’d like to go back and try them.

We hung out for a little bit and listened to music while random kids came up and petted Murphy.

After a while, Murphy started to get really hot and wanted to sit in the shade, so we decided that it was time to take him home.

(Do you see that white thing on his tongue?  What is that?  I need to ask the vet the next time I go.)  We left after about an hour and a half.  But we bought some art first!  The good thing about little festivals is that the art is more affordable. I really liked these ceramic pieces by a local artist named Eric Strange and ended up buying a big mug.  You can’t really tell from the picture, but this mug is much, much bigger than a normal coffee mug.