[Dixielandjazz] Any Listmates attend this Crawfish festival?

[Stephen G Barbone]

Any left coasters attend this Crawfish Festival? Sounds like a fun  
event with 1000+ attendees, cajun food, parasols and Dixieland.

Cheers,
Steve Barbone
www.myspace.com/barbonestreetjazzband.


More than 1,000 attended the Long beach Crawfish Festival to celebrate  
Cajun culture on Aug. 7-8, 2010 in Long Beach, Calif.

LONG BEACH - Celebrating crawfish Cajun style, more than 1,000 people  
came out to the 17th Annual
Crawfish Festival on Saturday and Sunday at Rainbow Lagoon.

Chef Que Purdy and her staff served beignets, fried doughnuts with a  
thin crispy shell smothered in
powdered sugar. Staff members sang improvised tunes about beignets as  
they kneaded dough or heaped
powdered sugar over finished pastries.

“Real Cajun, real love, that’s what it’s all about,” Purdy said. “You  
gotta have real love when you’re
cooking Cajun food. You know we have fun with your food so that way  
you don’t have to know whether
it’s bad or not. Because if it’s like this, it’s always gotta be good."

Servers at a food booth nearby spilled the secret to Cajun food  
goodness.

“It’s all in the spices,” said one worker as he and a partner emptied  
seafood from gigantic steel vats.

“It’ll clear your sinuses,” said Kevin Justice.

Even though Kevin Pierre, a Louisiana transplant who lives in Redondo  
Beach, cleaned his plate of
crawfish, he sensed something was not quite right.

Pierre, in his purple and gold hat, was hoping that the Long Beach  
event would give him a bit more comfort.

He hoped it would remind him of home with the street bands, the Mardi  
Gras parade, the bayou, the catfish,
and strangers waving hello. He missed the feeling of Grandma and her  
presence in the cooking and family
togetherness. “It’s the feeling that everything is family," he said.  
"I don’t know how to explain it. It is what it is.”

A procession of masked dancers wearing funeral attire and sporting  
parasols with fringes crowded onto the
parquet floor and danced to live Dixieland music.

Clotte Allochuku, 58, of Sherman Oaks, and her husband, J.C.  
Albritton, came to the event to hear musician Leroy Thomas. “I see  
people really love their culture,” said Allochuku, who was wearing a  
cherry red Mardi Gras hat  covered in yellow and green spikes. “You  
don’t want other people to water down your culture. You want to keep  
it alive, especially for the next generation.”

A dance floor beckoned.

But Albritton was satisfied tapping his toe to the Dixieland band  
playing nearby. He had a bad back and
wasn't about to get up and move around.

His wife wouldn’t let him off that easy. “I’m gonna pull him up out of  
this chair,” said Allochuku. “I’m gonna drag him out there!”