Northwest Indiana, like most of the Great Lakes region, approaches the warmer months of the year as revenge for winter. While the general public doesn’t recognize this fact- out of sorrow about winter’s inevitable return or out of reluctance to endorse revenge- it is generally expected that streets will be closed, parking will become unusual, public funds will be spent on security, and there will be beer.
While last week’s Festival of the Lakesis the clearly the Big Music Festival of the Summer and it keeps getting bigger, the Big Food Festival is clearly Whiting Indiana’s Pierogi Festival.
I hadn’t been to the Pierogi Festival in years. Less than Ten years, more than Five if I had to guess. One of the first things I noticed while seeking parking was that the locals were saving their parking spots the same way Chicagoans do all winter once they’ve shoveled them out and claimed them by Right of Conquest until the Spring: By placing roughly chair-sized objects in them as territorialHerms.
Patio Chairs seem like placeholders of convenience. Traffic cones, however, speak to a certain dedication on the part of the people who employ them. While chairs are not cheap, it’s easy to imagine that the people who’ve set them out might look optimistically on the chance to buy a new one should someone violate the lands they’ve marked as “under defense” in placing them there. Traffic cones are not objects for daily use. If someone is enjoying their morning coffee perched atop a traffic cone and smoking a cigarette on the patio, that person is surreal. Placing traffic cones is almost an attempt to steal valor from road construction crews. It implies authority. 
Television Trays. Behold, I have found remnants of the first Space Age.
When I lived in Honolulu people left the Island often enough that you’d find office chairs and shelving sitting around weekly. I suspect this is just a flex
Primitivism is going to make a big comeback.
It’s one thing to start with this kind of confidence- it’s something greater to rise above initial lettering failure with an apostrophe and a half-hearted invocation of casual speech.
I appreciate this tiny parody.
Whiting Indiana is not Chicago, and the Big Food Festival of the Summer in Northwest Indiana is still reasonably sized. I found parking after a few blocks. Maybe I arrived at an unusually reasonable hour. Maybe the locals knew something I did not about what was to come. Maybe, this was the calm before the storm.
Speaking of Nationalism and questionable taste, one gentleman selling shirts notable for their lack of nuanced thought was also promoting a book he’d written (and presumably published).
With over 300,000 attendees, the Whiting Pierogi Festival offers everything a festival enthusiast could ask for. Music, food, novelty shopping, psychics, caricature artists, pierogi shaped soap sellers, rides, and fodder for local photographers and news channels. Having worked the grills at other local food festivals I opted to limit my own purchases to a sesame roll as a gift for a family member and a frozen beverage for myself, but I didn’t leave without what I came for: Copious amounts of photographs of people eating, carrying, and pointing at things with food. Please enjoy them, as I see taking them as a form of sport.
