Life + Arts

Festival roots shine at night

Houston’s International Festival came to a close this weekend and, while the daytime hours were full of excited festivalgoers, when night fell, the festival became less commercialized and more about what it was initially meant to be – a celebration of Houston’s many different cultures.

Houston’s iFest celebrated its 38th birthday this year. For almost 40 years, Houstonians have attended the festival and experienced cultures from around the world. From Turkey to Thailand, iFest has covered the globe and brought it to downtown Houston.

That being said, iFest is expensive. After spending the $15 per person for admission, the festivalgoer is greeted by an event that is covered with back-to-back eateries, each more tempting than the next and all of them accepting only tickets instead of cash. The tickets cost $10 for a sheet of nine and most food items were at least seven tickets.

Besides the food, vendors selling wares from around the world dominate the majority of the festival space. The Irish section of the festival came complete with a genuine blacksmith who did his work in front of awed crowds. In the African/Caribbean section, vendors sold original African artwork while men rolled and sold handmade cigars in the gypsy village.

All of this made for an entertaining and expensive experience. During the day vendors were hard at work selling to eager crowds. But as night fell everyone relaxed and instead of sticking to their tried and true salesman’s script, they were more apt to strike up a conversation about how their products came from a place of genuine love and not one of necessity.

Instead of trying to push a product onto someone, the vendors instead started to talk to customers about the history of the food they sold or their handmade dresses on display.

As the crowds grew quieter, the music grew louder. iFest had eight different stages and at 8 p.m., eight bands took the stage. Attendees could wander to different sections of the festival to hear Latin music in one corner and Zydeco in the next.

Since much of the excitement and shows in the main parts of the festival had died down, small groups formed around each of the stages and made nighttime at iFest a time to sit down, catch up and listen to some good music.

The nighttime atmosphere remained a family event.’ Though areas around alcohol serving booths were a bit more raucous, families still had plenty of space to spread out a picnic blanket for the kids.

Since the theme for this year was Ireland, there was no shortage of pubs. Jameson whiskey and McGonigel’s Mucky Duck both had strong showings at the festival and were popular all night long.

So while the festival was a bit expensive on the whole, it was definitely worthwhile to stick around for the night festivities and use that $15 as a passport to different cultures. iFest completely and accurately exemplifies the fact that Houston is a melting pot and makes for a tasty and relaxing good time.

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