Recent Stories with tag Seward Park

"This is so bad for you; pure sugar," Mike tells me.

My half-Filipino pal's only exaggerating a little, I think as a perky Pinoy woman slides our desserts towards us. Mike's introducing me to halo-halo, a frozen cup of wonderful strangeness comprised of ice cream, shaved ice, coconut, sweet beans, candied fruit cubes, and other miscellany.

It's cold; it's so packed with natural sugars that it'd put your average diabetic into seizures; and it's oddly, wonderfully tasty. You know you're in for a treat if the food's so exotic that even your well-heeled tour guide/host can't identify the chunks of yellow fruit pulp bobbing in the cup's center (it turns out to be jackfruit).

"Welcome to Pinoy cuisine," Mike tells me as he jabs a spoon into the mixture and begins stirring with glee. Welcome to Pinoy everything, I think with a smile.

I'm joining Mike on this warm August 1 for Pista sa Nayon, Seattle's 21st annual celebration of Filipino music and culture. On this day, Seward Park's transformed into Ground Zero for the Emerald City's Filipino community, and it's no end of fun to be an onlooker.

On the surface, Pista resembles any one of the scores of ethnic festivals hosted at the Seattle Center during the spring and summer months, only liberated from the sometimes-staid atmosphere of the shiny cosmopolitan Center. There's a relaxed vibe to things: Filipinos and Filipino Americans from every strata of the local topography waltz through the Park's grounds, eating, laughing, hanging out, and drinking deeply of their culture.

B-boys and elderly widows weave cooperatively past one another, bonded by little more than their mutual heritage, and that's more than enough on this inviting day. The wide-eyed experience sponge in me enjoys it heartily, and my Filipino ex-pat chum is reveling in showing me around.... (more)