World Doesn't End, Fall Festival Happens

The fall festival! It's just like the one in the spring except possibly colder and if you go, you'll miss a couple of football games.

Actually, the weather Sunday was serene. The rain everyone feared stayed away. Instead a gentle sun for short-sleeves. About Town avoided the we suffered from the spring festival. Apropos of faulty prognosticating, readers should also remember from that spring day the street presence of wild-signed charlatans portending the in May, the second worst prediction this year after those who said the Sox would steal the East from the Yanks. This festival: no sunburn, Boston sucks and the catastrophe sages stayed home.

About Town started our fall festival tour passing south by the Sixth Street stage while the rock band Specktrum lamented for Lady Madonna. There we met Councilwoman Jennifer Giattino, two of her balloon-totting children at her feet. “You should get a bag,” she told us through a smile. “There's a lot of stuff to get!”

Lots of stuff. About Town saw paintings and framed photos for sale, plus new art forms made from everyday items like light switch covers and colored tape. We talked to Allan Feinberg of Highland Park as he chiseled away excess copper on foreign currency at his Art in Coin kiosk.

“I carve negative space out of coins to create artwork,” he said. The work looked interesting. We gave him our business card and he joked at sharing the same first name (About Town has a slightly more efficient spelling). Feinberg's wife read the card and stretched About Town's surname to Skanatra. Ha! Perhaps the band needs a spoken-word opening act.

We saw vendors selling dog sweaters and another offering colorful feathers for human hair. We saw an artist painting under the name Pig Dog. Love it – man's best pork!

Among Hobokenites Dr. Laura Brayton offered massages and Dana, the psychic with the shop on Washington Street sold readings.

About Town chatted with Rory Chadwick of clothing boutique Midtown Authentic, who was auctioning at his kiosk a vintage Louis Vuitton trunk. We petted Chadwick's nice dog Louis (named after Vuitton). We talked about lucking into pleasant weather with Bess Sobota, curator of the Lana Santorelli Art Gallery. This was the first Hoboken festival. “She said I'm not allowed to say rain,” Sobota said, pointing to her superstitious neighbor in the next booth.

In passing we banged forearms slugger-style with Scott Siegel eating food on his way back to the Republicans of Hoboken tent. We fist jabbed with bar owner Joe Branco cooking burgers at the Hoboken Dads Group grill.

From carne to confections, About Town craved the colorful Cutie Patootie cakes at the “Mom's Water Broke, Everything's Got to Go” booth. After the that should be the city's new craze – pop-up pregnancy joints. Just Moms slinging merch.

About Town smiled upon seeing the Hoboken Gospel Church table curiously placed in front of the risque Romantic Depot. The tattoo-tainted Harleyists of the Hoboken Motorcycle Club were close too.

A street hawker for the Mile Square Theatre handed to two venerable nuns a postcard for the company's of the play God of Carnage, a translated comedy whose content ironically avoids religion altogether and would probably shock the Sisters. Zabrina Stoffel at the MST booth told us the company is taking its play to the Met in November.

Heading back uptown we cut through the Third Street kiddie pavilion with large inflatable slides and Big Jeff & the Bouncy People onstage singing: dance on your belly like a bowl full of jelly!

Then after some last stops to see friends at the Museum and Rotary tables, and some joking with parader and Yankee lover Bill Noonan about the Red Sox choking, About Town hit the end of the line. We had seen everything at the festival, and anyway it was time to head home - had to check our football picks.

Alan Skontra was a big dork who never went anywhere. Then he started writing the About Town column for Patch, and now he's everywhere. Have a hot tip on an event in Hoboken? Send an invitation, questions and comments too, to alanskontra@hotmail.com, and peep his tweets @alanskontra.