Hawaiian Day Festival (Redwood City)

On Sunday, September 12, 2010, I wanted to get out of the house. I found a nearby low-key festival. My plan was to get tasty festival food for lunch and sit outside reading while listening to music. Although I went to the festival, my activities did not turn out as I'd planned.

The festival I selected was Redwood City's Hawaiian Day, a small family-oriented event that Redwood City runs every month during the summer, each event with a different theme. I'd been to past versions of this festival Indian Day (2009) and Immigrants Day (2008)) and generally enjoyed them, in part because they're centered in Redwood City's remarkably pretty historic courthouse square.

As I expected, the festival was a family-focused, with lots of performances and activities for kids including some Hawaiian games.

Unlike what I expected (and was promised by the web page), there was no Hawaiian food. The only food at the festival was a hot dog truck!

As unlike my expectations, no one was performing at the big stage when I arrived.

I wandered around the festival, deciding what to do, and found the local museum, the San Mateo County History Museum, was performing a short play, The Strange Case of Constance Flood. Dramatizing a true story, it portrays a lawsuit where an alleged daughter, long out of contact with her alleged parents, comes forward to claim her share of the inheritance, while the surviving spouse claims the daughter lived with the family for a time as a charity case and wasn't actually a daughter. The judge was clearly not objective. Though an interesting true story, the script was poor and the tale could've been told much faster. On the plus side, adding extra color to the performance was the fact that the show took place in the courthouse where the trial happened eighty years before.

When I left the play, now hungrier, there still wasn't anyone performing on the main stage.

Lucky for my stomach, there are many restaurants in downtown Redwood City. Following yelp reviews, I tried a nearby Mexican place for lunch, and it was surprisingly decent. My sopes and salad were light, novel presentations. The small salad even included soursop (a.k.a. guanabana), a fruit I don't think I'd ever eaten before.

When I walked by the festival again after lunch, there finally was music on the main stage. I'm surprised it started so late in the festival--the festival was scheduled to end in 1.5 hours. I sat and read but left after not long because it turned out the music wasn't my thing.