Anyway....
Chicago Green Festival, May 22-23 in the Navy Pier! I volunteered as a box office cashier for one day, which was actually interesting because I got a look at the kind of people turning up to this thing. Then I spent a few hours Sunday going through the whole thing and desperately ogling chocolate selections (fair trade, vegan, and other small business chocolates tend to not have as much sugar in them--a huuuuge relief after the cavity landmines of American candy).
My overall evaluation: holy awesome!
They gave out a ton of promotional free entrances (both through fliers and through things like student/bike riders/public transit user discounts), and a lot of people took advantage of it. Way more, in fact, than what you'd expect. Some were a number of the people passing through Navy Pier (and I mean there's a shitload; for evidence check out the lines permanently wrapped around all their bathrooms...did I just make a really gross pun?).
The overwhelming majority of people were not a bunch of hippietastic long-haired hemp loving random Hindi wearing vegan animal rights obsessed jobless ...dudes. Oh yeah, there were totally plenty of people falling into at least some of these subcategories, and yeah there were some tables clearly geared towards the most socialist elements and such. But there were also:
- A number of organizations dedicated to dealing with the promotion of public transportation and its use in Illinois, including Illinois High Speed Rail and representatives from the Chicago Transit Authority
- A ton of natural and fair trade products; including makeup, clothing, jewelry, accessories, and toiletries
- All sorts of home improvement things, including solar panels and other alternative energy sources + window treatments to improve insulation and get the eco rebate thing
- FOOD. I could write hymns to raw food--I've developed a huge thing for dates, and fruit-based oils are so good. Have you ever had a key lime pie Larabar
? They're fucking amazing. Can you spell mouthgasm? OH. And a number of chocolates--but you'll see those in another blog. Dun dun dun.
- Stuff for kids: start them early!
So yeah. This seemed like a revival of the term 'going green'--it's so easy to get annoyed by hearing it, but when you're walking through all these displays seeing people learning how they can do small stuff without having to compromise their dinner tables or pretty gardens, and also maybe while you're snacking on some delicious delicious samples....
'Green' is here to stay.
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