2019 Celebrate Fairfax Recap

The 38th annual Celebrate Fairfax took place over the weekend and this was my 18th festival. Based on the time I’ve spent at the festival, I can now vote (which I’m actually going to do today). Here are my notes and thoughts about this year’s event:

* Let’s start with the headliners. Better Than Ezra sounded good in the 2 minutes I saw them perform during sound check. I saw Smash Mouth on Saturday night and was a little surprised by the size of the crowd. I probably shouldn’t have been though. It was a beautiful day, so why wouldn’t people come out to the festival and see the headliner, particularly one that had three monster hits in the late 1990s and early 2000s? Unlike Sugar Ray last year (where Mark McGrath continuously talked with the crowd), there was almost no banter with the audience for Smash Mouth and its lead singer Steve Harwell. They just played one song after another. Here’s my one complaint about their set. Go to around the 8:45 mark of these videos to see All-Star.





Now you can say that it was really cool to let the audience sing the song. Or you could say that if someone wanted to sing All Star, they could do that at home or at karaoke without having the actual band playing the music on the stage. At least sing a line or two to start the second verse, Steve!

* The days of me volunteering for the entire three days of the festival are over. With three kids and their activities, it’s just not possible. I still enjoy helping with set up, and there’s definitely a bit of a rush seeing everything that happens before the gates open. I highly recommend helping out with Celebrate Fairfax or another event like this if you can. There's definitely a camaraderie too with all of the volunteers. With that written, I seem to know fewer and fewer people each year. There are only a handful of people who still volunteer at the festival from when I started in 2002 and probably only a few more than that from even 7 or 8 years ago. I guess that’s natural. It truly is a young person’s thing to be able to volunteer throughout the weekend.

* I think part of the reason for the big crowd on Saturday was the call for rain on Sunday. Even though it rained Sunday morning and definitely scared people away, when I arrived on site with The Moose and Pedro Tulo in the afternoon, it was just cloudy with some sprinkles. Basically, we had the run of the place. We had front-row seats (under a tent!) to see the animals brought by Wildlife Ambassadors. We stood almost directly in front of the stage to see the final song by Herr Metal, and one of the guitar players threw Pedro Tulo a pick. (Amazingly, he hasn't lost this yet.)

We also had perfect views of the US Army Band Downrange which the boys loved watching while eating big ice cream cones. For possibly the first time ever, there was no line to spin the wheel for the Great American Restaurants booth. As a comparison, there were easily 25 people in this line at 11:30 on Friday morning before the “Sneak Peak” for county employees. The booth didn’t even open until noon!

Exhibitors were more than happy to interact with us and give us stuff. We probably received about 6 plastic cups from Glory Days and about the same number of DC United temporary tattoos. We won 6 tickets to see the George Mason men’s basketball team’s first home game in November. The kids barely had to wait to play Cox’s virtual reality baseball game, and we spent some time with on-air personalities from the local ABC affiliate (WJLA). Kidd O’Shea actually took pictures of us. Basically, if it’s not raining very much, definitely go to a festival!

*Comedy hypnotist Brad Matchett is amazing. I have no idea how he does it, but if you have a chance to see him, go (though I don't see any upcoming events currently listed on his Facebook page). You won’t be disappointed.

* I only got 4 Fairfax Water cups this year. If we still had all of the cups from them since 2002, we’d have well over 100 by now!

That's really all that I have for this year. I ate a gyro from Bethel Park's John the Greek since his gyros are great. I walked 24,618 steps on Friday with about 23,000 of those steps being at the festival site. And yes, I'll be back again next year.

2015 Celebrate Fairfax Notes

After working or volunteering at Celebrate Fairfax for nearly the entire festival for more than a decade, it seems odd only being there for a small part of the event. I helped with setup on Friday and things seemed to go more smoothly this year than during any other set-up I remember. Here are some other thoughts of this year's festival.

I took my four year old (The Moose) to see the fireworks on Saturday night. I believe that this was the first time he has ever seen them live. There's nothing like seeing the amazement in my son's eyes as he watched the fireworks. Very cool moment as a parent.

I heard an unconfirmed rumor that this was the last year there will be fireworks at Celebrate Fairfax. Groundbreaking has already started on the new Residences at Government Center and by next year, there will likely be people living there. According to what I heard, the Fire Marshall won't allow fireworks to be set off so close to residential property.

Probably The Moose's favorite activity was the DockDogs Championship. Here's the description of DockDogs: The world’s premier canine aquatics competition, DockDogs, is a national dog jumping competition that will feature four-legged athletes from around the region. It was really cool. Here's a picture that I actually took myself. Maybe I could be a photographer!

Glory Days/Fanfare always has a booth at Celebrate Fairfax, and the staff from the restaurant group are incredibly nice and friendly. I really need to go there to eat more often.

Brad Matchett is a comedy hypnotist who performs regularly at Celebrate Fairfax. While I didn't see any of his hypnotist acts, I caught some of his comedy show at the Children's Avenue stage. He is really, really good and captures everyone's full attention which is incredible given the attention span of some kids (and adults) I know. This is his Facebook page.

The only significant story worth sharing from set-up involved a frog. Apparently, a frog got injured, possibly partially run over by a vehicle. Personally, I had no idea there were any frogs on the Government Center grounds. Anyway, someone setting up a booth noticed the frog (which I will not call Kermit) and moved him/her away from the cement and on to a grassy area. There was actually a veterinary practice there, but they completed set up and were not there when I tried to find them to help. I checked on the frog a few times, and he wasn't there the last time I looked. I guess (hope) that he/she was good enough to head out and eat some flies. Maybe this really wasn't worth sharing.

My one year old (Pedro Tulo) loves to move around, so while I think he enjoyed seeing Celebrate Fairfax from the stroller, his favorite part of the fair was the festival office. We let him out, and he loved being able to crawl everywhere. On his behalf, I apologize to the person who called asking about festival hours. Pedro Tulo said the event ended at 6:00 on Sunday when it really was 7:00. (He really didn't say this. Or answer the phone.)

That's a wrap on Celebrate Fairfax 2015. Save the date, June 10-12, 2016, for next year's festival.