First of all, if you're going to get stuck in festival traffic this weekend -- and, hoo boy, you are -- SunFest traffic beats Air and Sea Show traffic. To see the ASS (heh heh), you have to go over a bridge to get to the ocean. And those bridges go up every half an hour! SunFest, on the other hand, was wisely planned to go down on this side of the Intracoastal. Air and Sea Show-goers will comb their mullets, slap their 9/11 stickers on the back of their minivans, and say, "Hey Honey! Another reason for me to bust out that Old Navy shirt with the flag on it from three summers ago!" While the tourists, Top Gun wannabes, and Dick Cheney look-alikes work on their sunburns, the SunFest crowd, suspiciously resembling refugees from a Jimmy Buffett concert, will fish brews out of the coolers in the backs of their Porsche convertibles while adjusting their bikini tops.
At SunFest, you might find a masterpiece by one of the 160 artists who've set up a booth. You might marvel at the shrimp-eating contest on Saturday at 3 p.m. You might try 30 yet-to-be-released video games (Halo 2, Tony Hawk's Underground 2, etc.) at 70 Xbox stations. You might sample a delicious cheesesteak or an arepa. But the pièce de résistance is this: You can drink beers on a barge! What's that you say, Paul Leone? Your ASS (heh heh) has a barge? One with fireworks shooting off of it? Yeah, well SunFest has one of those too! The utterly superior SunFest fireworks display goes off at 9 p.m. Friday. But it also has three barges with bars on them. And they're sponsored by Captain Morgan. Tell that to your friend Suckity McSuckburger!
The entertainment lineup at SunFest can only be described as massive. True, the festival circuit was formerly known as the place where old musicians go to wither and die, but 'Fest organizers have done a decent job this year. Nelly, Wyclef Jean, Billy Idol... Admittedly, promoters must have had some sadistic urge to sabotage their own event by hiring "Starship featuring Mickey Hart," but... Oh, can you hold on a sec? I hear a pathetic whimper. That other writer (who kind of resembles Mickey Hart, come to think of it) is crying about the Air and Sea Show having entertainment too. Who did you say was the headliner? The Bacon Brothers? Cool. If you don't fall asleep watching them, you can play a nice game of Six Degrees of Suck.
