First Friday!
The First Friday festival of the arts is held on the first Friday of every month. The entire art district of downtown Las Vegas turns into a celebration of the arts! Streets are blocked off and only pedestrian traffic is allowed. Art galleries and antique stores stay open late for shoppers. Vending tents and booths are set up on the streets. Artists set up shop and market nearly every style of art that can be imagined. Many artists at First Friday market artworks that cannot possibly be imagined! Everything from classic art to pop art can be experienced at the festival. There are several band stages that are set up for the art festival. Everything from classical Spanish guitar music to DJ hip hop music can be heard. One band stage had the timeless 1960's style "Love and Peace" music going on. Metal Skate Dude music was playing at the far end of the street. Talented solo musicians with tip jars were scattered in between. There was some great music in the air and it set a festive atmosphere. There are plenty of beer, wine and cocktail tents for anybody that gets thirsty while roaming around the streets of the First Friday festival. Several bars and restaurants cater to the crowd. One of the most popular art district restaurant style night clubs has an open air patio area and shortly after dark, it turns into a big party. In fact, the entire First Friday festival turns into one big party after dark! Las Vegas has several colleges, universities and art schools. Since September is the month that most college students return to school, the turnout for this month's First Friday was tremendous! The Las Vegas Pride Parade was taking place just a couple blocks away and that added even more of crowd to the art festival's huge attendance. I photographed both events last Friday night. If you take a look at the Pride Parade photographs and written piece that I attached to the September 8th food blog article, then you can imagine how big and how wild the First Friday of this month in Las Vegas was! On my way to the Pride Parade, a group of art school students with a camera approached me and they stated that they were doing a school film project. The art school students asked to interview me on camera. The students were dressed in costumes. One guy was dressed up as one of the Mario Brothers and another guy was dressed up in 1970's disco clothes with an afro! I have never been interviewed by Mario and a disco pimp before, so this was a first! The theme of the art school film interview involved one just one question. The question was "What does creativity mean to you?" When you are on the spot, any question can be tough to answer while on camera and poise is better off if it is tossed out the window. I just let my answer flow and the art school students got a kick out of what I said. We slapped hands and parted ways after I clicked a few photographs of the film crew. Those Las Vegas art school students were really cool and the film project interview was fun! After all the walking between the First Friday festival and the Pride Parade, I became ravenously hungry! I did some serious calorie burning while wandering around downtown Las Vegas at the two big events. Most of the Las Vegas food trucks set up shop at the First Friday festival. As everybody knows, Las Vegas is famous for food trucks that serve gourmet cutting edge food and trendy snack food. The food trucks were all available at the First Friday celebration for two reasons. They were there to make money and the Las Vegas Food Truck Round Up was taking place Saturday September 7th through the 9th! The Food Truck Round Up drew even more people to the First Friday Art Festival. With three big events going on in one area, I would not be surprised if the attendance record for the September First Friday was shattered. It was a huge problem free crowd of people and everybody was having fun! Hungry to the max! I was hungry when I saw the sign for Amore, Taste Of Chicago. When I saw the sign for Chicago Style Deep Dish Pizza, my knees buckled! Go for it! The deep dish pizza pies were made by hand the old fashioned way at Amore. The pizza looked so good, that there was no way to resist. The aroma of pizza filled the air. Thats Amore! The slice of pepperoni deep dish pizza was perfect for the moment. I sat down to rest my feet and devoured that slice of pizza like I had never experienced pizza before. The deep dish Chicago style pizza was great and the sauce was not sweet at all. Amore, Taste Of Chicago used good tomatoes to make their pizza sauce and no sugar was needed. The pizza really hit the spot and I then had some new found energy. If you ever see the Amore, Taste Of Chicago tent at an event, do not pass it up! I highly recommend trying a slice of their pie! I will continue this story as a Part 2 sequel in my next food blog article. The second Las Vegas food truck that I sampled food from will be worth reading about. I also stopped by to say hey to a friend at one of the oldest bars in Las Vegas. That also turned into an interesting experience. If you want to see larger images of the photographs above, then click on any photo and a slide show mode will appear. First Friday is the place to be on the first Friday of every month in Las Vegas! Yum! ... Shawna
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