brewgrass!

Yesterday I had to be at Jess and Edglas' house at 7:15 to pack up a U Haul van they rented for brewgrass. I was so worried about oversleeping that I set 2 alarms. I woke up at 430 and couldn't go back to sleep so I read for a while and then got ready to go.

Which makes what happened next so ironic. I kept thinking I should leave but didn't want to show up at their place too early. When I finally left, there was some bike ride thing going on on my street. I crawled along at 5 miles an hour behind a group of about 20 cyclists. It was like something out of a 60s italian movie. 

Finally I got to their place and we packed up and headed to the festival (well, lots of stuff happened but you probably don't care). Once again, we were the first vendor to arrive and we ended up getting moved to a better spot. Also, Jess had not realized she needed to reserve a large space because she thought we could use the side walk behind us (turned out that was not the case). As luck would have it, another vendor had cancelled Friday night so we got to use their spot for free (so far Jess has been super lucky at events).

We started to set up and Jess realized she had forgotten the crock pots where the meat for the acaraje is kept warm. I ran back to their place and picked them up. Also, they had forgotten to bring an umbrella (there was a chance for rain in the afternoon) but I had grabbed mine that morning. We were joined again by Jess' sister Erica and her room mate whom I will call Romeo. We talked about our goals for the day. Erica and Romeo wanted to flirt with cute guys. My goal was to talk to as few people as possible and to learn how to mix the dough.

The festival started at noon and went until 10 pm. With so many of us there we got all the prep work done without too much craziness. We got the first order at 12:17. From that point on we were never without an order, but they were trickling in one at a time. I worked the dough and cooked. Edglas said I was good at mixing the dough and the acarajes were coming out picture perfect.

Then all hell broke loose around 3. We had a line and it started getting longer and longer. I was bouncing between the dough, cooking shrimp and chicken, and helping prep the sandwiches. And right as we were in the thick of it rain started to fall. That ended up being a bit of a blessing in disguise as it was the only break we would get for the rest of the day. At first we tried to keep cooking with me holding an umbrella over the fryer but it wasn't working.

at first it was just a light drizzle - 5 minutes after I took this picture it turned into a torrential downpour and we scrambled to move everything under the tent

Then it started thundering. People left or huddled for shelter. I decided to take some pictures since we couldn't do anything else.

Jess, Edglas, Romeo (a wine vendor had just come by and traded us wine for an acaraje), and Erica

me in the land of giants - at 5'8" I'm not used to being the shortest person in a picture - I started to think of the four of us as the amazons, with me being the runt of the litter

 I was then put on cloud duty to try to apply what I had learned in my meteorology class to figure out how long the storm was going to last. Jess and Erica frantically searched weather map sites to see what the radar was capturing about the storm.

And then it started hailing.

at first it was just little bits of hail, and Romeo and I were commenting that it was a typical little summer shower with some hail thrown in

then it started REALLY hailing and we worried the tent was going to fall down - it's hard to see in the picture but some of the hail was bigger than a marble - side note, do kids today still play with marbles? I loved marbles when I was a kid

At that point all of us were freezing, and thinking the festival would end in disaster, and just when things seemed to be totally hopeless, Romeo ran out into the hail storm and raised his hands to the sky.

"hail - FUUUUCK OFF!!!!"

I am not sure what mysterious incantations he used, but it worked. Five minutes later the sky cleared and the sun came out. Before we had a chance to even think about wiping the hail off the tables we were mobbed with people who patiently waited 20 minutes while we got the fryer heated up and the booth reassembled.

By 5 pm we had a longer line than any of the beer tents. Probably the only line longer than ours was the porta potty line which is why I ended up not peeing for 8 hours. Not that there was time to drink anything anyway. I worked dough, then cooked meat, then helped Romeo make sandwiches. The only thing I refused to do was take orders and money from customers. We could hear the bands really well because the speaker was right next to our tent so Erica, Jess, and Romeo would spontaneously start dancing. The customers loved it. They're all good dancers. I just stood there looking awkward.

Speaking of customers, we ran into some total assholes at brewgrass. There was a completely drunk woman who stuck a $10 in Jess' face and said "do you see this money? do you understand that I have money and want a sandwich?" (she had cut in line in front of everyone). Other people try to order from me so they wouldn't have to wait in line. And some guy complained about having to wait 5 minutes for his order (we were slammed and he had ordered 6 sandwiches - we deliver each sandwich as we make them so he already had some of his order but was just being a drunk dick).

And then there were the idiots. One woman told Edglas that the proper name for the sandwich was something ("acar" is what it sounded like she said) because she had been to Portugal and had something similar. Then she started lecturing him on Portugese (apparently she took a class once) and the derivative of the name of the acaraje sandwich. After I purposely bumped her twice she went away. Another guy tried to speak to Edglas in Spanish and then told his friend Edglas must not really be Brazilian (this was a common snot ass remark heard from customers: "but is anyone working in your tent REALLY brazilian?"). My favorite stupid comment from people was "oh look, they're frying potato salad". Do people actually do that? One drunk guy kept insisting that he didn't want to try an acaraje but he did want to try the fried potato salad and could I make that for him since he couldn't order it from the front. He finally went away.

Then there were the assholes who would come up right behind me and ask what I was doing, or put their food on our prep surfaces even though there was an area full of tables and chairs RIGHT BEHIND US. I was as polite as I could be but it pissed me off that people would put a PLASTIC CUP right next to a stove where I was trying to fry shrimp or set their plates of food (from other vendors) on the table right where I was putting cooking utensils.

And for what ever reason, children of all sizes would make a bee line right for the fryer. I can't even imagine the catastrophe that would have unfolded if all of us in the tent weren't constantly scanning for the toddlers of drunken parents. The fryer is barricaded but there's only so much you can do to keep people away from it. One drunk guy told his friend he was going to reach into the fryer and pull out some dough. He really looked like he was going to do it. Edglas gave him a death stare; the guy left.

Oh drunken people at music festivals.

We started running out of food around 8 pm. By 9:15 we had served our last order. People in line were practically trampling each other trying to get the last sandwiches. One guy started yelling at me and I was like "who the fuck waits until 9:15 to get food?" All the other food vendors were already shut down except the guy next to us who was selling popsicles.

All of us were exhausted but managed to get the tent broken down and everything packed up in record time. Having the van was great because we didn't have to make multiple trips. And I finally had my first beer of the day (and also my last, I felt light headed after I drank it). I finally got home around 11:15 and had a hot shower, and then watched Magnum Force because I was too tired to go to bed. I had a lot of fun and felt a huge sense of accomplishment from helping out.

As an interesting, to me, ending to this story, I would just mention that the five points jazz festival is in what's considered a "poorer" area because we have low income housing. The brewgrass was held in a yuppie-ish area of Denver. Who do you think were the better tippers? Obviously five points. Maybe people who attend events like brewgrass don't know how hard it is to work in the food service industry. You have to be physically strong, have good people skills, and be quick on your feet so you can figure out how to solve the crazy problems that happen when you're trying to feed people.

Something to think about next time you're eating out and aggravated by the service...