2008 Salisbury Festival in pictures and text

This is a long post warning. By my count I have 20 images and that doesn’t even factor in the music, which I’ll cover in the upcoming Weekend of local rock volume 14 post later this week. But it was a very nice Friday night and yesterday for the most part and I wanted to share all I could with my readers. The photos are roughly in chronological order but I did take some liberties to make things flow better. I’ll begin with several shots of the opening ceremony on Friday evening.

There was a nice crowd gathered awaiting the opening to the 2008 Salisbury Festival, even in the food court across the Wicomico River.

Salisbury Mayor Barrie Tilghman had a few words to say prior to coming down off the stage and doing her ceremonial duty.

The color guard was a nice touch. I believe that it was from Wicomico High School, but I may be incorrect.

All the politicians holding the ribbon are waiting with bated breath - for their photo-op to be finished.

Finally, the ribbon was cut and the 2008 Salisbury Festival officially kicked off.

The thing that stuck out at me about what Mayor Tilghman noted was her overselling of how great the city was. While it’s not a hellhole, it’s not paradise on earth either and Salisbury does have more than its share of problems. She talked more about her memories and experiences of the Salisbury Festival when I think the spotlight should have been on all who helped with the event. And Louise Smith aggravated me with her greeting to the Spanish-speaking folks out there in their native tongue. It’s a rant for some other post and/or blogger, though.

One thing that is fun about any festival is the food. Here’s a shot of the food court Friday night.

The population of the hungry in Salisbury seemingly reached a peak Friday night.

Included in those merchants and entities selling edible goodies was one Wicomico County Republican Club. You can see what they had on the bill of fare.

Business was brisk at the WCRC booth. By the way, the guy in the red with his back to the camera is Delegate Page Elmore.

While there were a number of people who helped out, I’d like to point out that WCRC President Marc Kilmer is the guy in the hat serving folks to the right of the photo.

Because most of my focus on Friday night was on the Block Party with the two bands there, that was pretty much the extent of my Friday night pictures. Since I kept running into people I knew and having conversations with them my photography time was cut down somewhat, not that I really minded. This year was the first time I was able to enjoy the full Block Party because in previous years I always had a conflict with the tail end of my bowling league.

Now let’s start on pics from Saturday.

I had a schedule already set based on which bands were at particular stages, but it also gave me time to check out the classic cars on display along Main Street. While there were a lot of nice cars there, this one was my favorite.

This car was my favorite because you see lots of Camaros and Mustangs in a classic car display, but not many Barracudas. This 1968 beauty belongs to Kyle Baker of Eden, Maryland.

By 10:00 Main Street was already starting to get pretty full.

This shot is looking west down Main Street from the corner of Baptist Street.

I also took advantage of the health screening available from the Peninsula Regional Medical Center Wagner Wellness Van. This shot is for my Red Maryland blogging cohort Tim Patterson of Gunpowder Chronicle.

This vehicle was just placed into service recently and came in handy for doing health screenings like one I had.

There I found out I have lost 30 pounds since the beginning of this year and now weigh less than I have in at least 11 years. Needless to say, I was damn proud of myself. But I had a LOT more walking to do this day, as you’ll see later on. It was even for a good cause.

Returning to my travels, I worked my way westward down Main Street and found this intriguing booth.

I'll see more of these guys in a couple days, but prominently featured on this table were books by my favorite growth alarmist, Eben Fodor.

It was only natural to me that I would walk up the steps toward the Government Office Building and see this group set up there, right behind the WET folks.

Despite my best efforts, groups like this still exist in our area.

Since they did have a little bit on Frank Kratovil, I did pick up a literature piece there. It’s about twice as much as I previously knew about the guy. But I had to ask why there was so much Obama stuff and very little from Hillary. Basically it was like the issue I had with GOP campaigns – some are generous sending things and some aren’t.

By the time I was finished there, it was time for me to catch the first of several bands I’d see, and that’s for a later post. Afterwards, it was time to grab my lunch from these friendly folks you see below.

I actually took this picture of the Wicomico County Republican Club food booth just after they opened at 10 a.m. The lady was the first of many satisfied customers.

I would be remiss not to say something about the gentleman in the straw hat you see in the background shucking corn. Bob Miller does a yeoman’s job each year organizing the food and the help and we don’t thank him nearly enough for it. And yes, he’s publicity shy because there’s work to do!

Another neat thing for the kid in all of us was seeing some of these city vehicles up close and personal. But I wonder how much time is spent cleaning them for the occasion?

A whole row of City of Salisbury work vehicles were parked along the side of Market Street.

Early on I also looped around to check out the west end of the Plaza just to see how things were over there. It wasn’t all that crowded until later on.

It was a pretty slow start to proceeedings from the west end of the downtown plaza.

Finally, I came across this hardworking group laboring over something that would be pretty much history by about 4:00 yesterday afternoon.

Anyone who thinks I got their bad side, believe me it was purely coincidental. I tried to wait until everyone was facing in a decent direction.

Here was a small portion of the end result. Ironically this will be my final downtown picture from yesterday.

Just a small portion of a mural that was done by a large group of youths. It was pretty cool to see but all their effort was to be washed away later in the day.

I packed up all the stuff I picked up from various merchants and headed home just as the brief thundershower hit. In a way, I was happy to have the rain cooling things off because I had one more place to go. But first, here’s a wildlife pic I just took for fun over by the Salisbury Zoo.

See, I can take wildlife pictures too.

The reason I was over there was to participate once again in the Ben Layton Memorial 5K Run/Walk. This has become sort of an adjunct event to the Salisbury Festival because it’s held on the same Saturday, and they mention the race in the Festival program as well. Yesterday was their third annual event and I’m pleased to say that there were over 160 participants this year, which I believe is a record for the event. I didn’t remember runner numbers that high in the last two.

Here's just some of the walkers and runners getting ready for the Ben Layton Memorial 5K.

While it's not the 'after' picture yet, there is less of me. I put this on just in case people at the event wondered how I knew about it - well, I was number 28, that guy wearing the Harris sticker.

Even though they’ve moved away since the tragic loss of their son Ben, the Laytons return to Salisbury each year for this event. It’s held to raise money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society of America and I like the event because I don’t have to solicit pledges or collect money for it. I just give them the registration fee and I’m good to go.

I was pleasantly surprised this year to find out there was now a division for those who wanted to walk the 5K route, which was something I asked about when I sent in my application. (Previously I’d done the 2 mile “fun walk” they also feature.) While I finished third of the three entrants (although I suspect the second-place finisher may have, intentionally or not, taken some liberties with the route) I still beat my goal of finishing in 45 minutes, clocking at 40:42. But the real winners were the LLS and all of the local sponsors who chipped in. In particular the folks at LORA really did a great job with the food.

It was a good ending to an exhausting two days of the Salisbury Festival, and hopefully my article gives the flavor of the event to those who couldn’t be there or wanted to relive it. It was my pleasure to provide that service, and don’t forget later this week I’ll talk about some of the musical entertainment.

Author: Michael

It's me from my laptop computer.

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