Little Italy Days

In the neighborhood where I live, they host what is called, "Little Italy Days." The neighborhood is of Italian descent, and you wouldn't be remiss in hearing some of the older folks talking in Italian, their accents unmistakable as they stand in the checkout line at the small Italian stores as they purchase homemade pasta dishes, ravioli, gnocci, and small meatballs with sauce.

At the end of September, from the last Friday to the last Sunday of the month, the neighborhood holds their Little Italy festival, Booths are set up along along four blocks of Liberty Avenue (a main thoroughfare to get to downtown Pittsburgh).

You can find just about everything you wanted from the vendors, who traveled from, well, who knows where to offer their products and services. Many Italian restaurants take this opportunity to set up food booths so people can get a taste of their wares to entice them into the main restaurant. There are also lemonade stands, funnel cake stands, baked good booths and a Brewsters ice cream van.

But the festival also has booths that don't seem to be Italian-related. They have motorcycles, small cars, rain gutter samples, leather handbags, Fall knickknacks, and even a carpeted indoor spa for interested festival-goers.

For the kids, well, I didn't really see any games for them. But there was plenty for the adult kids to do. They had a bocci ball court and tons of gambling games.

The Overlord and I went to the festival on Friday and on Sunday. Friday, we went down early to see what type of booths were set up. When I caught sight of the Brewsters ice cream van, I decided to take the Overlord back down later (after dinner) for a scoop or two of chocolate ice cream.

Then we went back down there on Sunday to see the live band. A woman sang old show tune songs, the ones you would hear on stage back in the 1950s-60s as the band would blow their trumpets and saxophones in the old night clubs where people would dress up in their best suits and dresses to sit down at wooden tables in the smoky room, puffing at cigars and long cigarettes.

The Overlord watched and listened for a bit (after I took her to the park to get all muddy), then we went back home. Fireworks sounded late into the night, although that could have come from the baseball game.

So that was another year of the Little Italy Day festival.