Friday March 30th the Ann Arbor community gathered downtown after sunset for the Fool Moon festival, the first event of FestiFools. People of all ages brought their hand-made luminaries to showcase, and many people got dressed up in wacky outfits for the event.
The crowd paraded through the Diag, through Nickels Arcade, and into downtown, showing off their luminaries. Downtown, near Frita Batidos, there was a tent with live entertainment, and what looked like beer, though I couldn’t get close enough to find out! There were live musicians as well, including a man with a tuba, and a few students banging on buckets that were hanging from their necks, as they walked through the crowd. There was also video being projected onto the side of a building, though the clips seemed somewhat random, and there was no sound. However the randomness fit well with the theme of the night.
The event felt like pure craziness. There seemed to be little organization, and everyone stood around in their silly costumes, holding their luminaries and looking around at everyone else. Other than the live music and the beer, there really wasn’t much else going on. There was a guy with a moon pie luminary hat selling “fool moon pies” for $2. Other than that there was no other food for sale, or any other activities going on. It was really fun to go and see, but I didn’t stay very long, as there really wasn’t much to do but stand there and look at all the luminaries. I think in the future it would be good for the event to be more organized, and for there to be more entertainment and food downtown for the event. It would also be nice to have a line-up of all the luminaries and maybe have a contest awarding prizes for the best ones–maybe people could vote, or cheer for their favorites. The idea of Fool Moon is really interesting and fun, but I think there needs to be more planned components of the event in order to make it a lasting tradition. I can’t imagine putting so much work into making a luminary just to stand there in the street downtown in a crowd of people for a few hours. I think there needs to be more to it than that.
All in all, the event was interesting and fun to go to. It was really cool to see the street lit up with hand-made luminaries in all different crazy shapes and sizes, with people dressed up in silly costumes, and loud, electronic-rock music blasting–it was a really unique experience! If you weren’t able to make it to Fool Moon this year, I would definitely recommend checking it out next year. It’s one of those events that if you live in Ann Arbor, you must experience it once!
