Every sizable, decent city has a main “cool part of town” and where I live it’s my neighborhood: East Nashville. This is where you find an abundance of artists, songwriters, musicians, and others who have trouble fitting into a cubicle life, plus you’ve got historic homes, sidewalks, bike lanes, and plenty of bars and restaurants you can get to on foot.

Each year the neighborhood’s biggest party is the Tomato Art Fest, started by a local gallery owner and growing each year like a prize-winning tomato at the county fair. You can spend the whole day here, especially if you have kids. This being Nashville, there are plenty of great bands playing all day. Galleries display tomato-related art and hand out prizes. Kids can get their hair spray painted red and do tomato-themed crafts. This year kiddies built a giant sundae at a local ice cream shop—then dived in and ate it before it melted.

There’s a contest for the biggest/smallest/ugliest tomatoes, a “dress-up your tomato” contest (always at least one Elvis), and fashion shows for both people and dogs—wearing items from local businesses.

Naturally, this being a peak time of year for tomatoes, there’s no trouble finding related food in the restaurants and bars. Pictured here is a green tomato BLT: my lunch at Rumours East. You can pick up some fresh salsa or good bloody mary mix from one of the booths. (Oh, there’s an annual bloody mary contest as well.)

Sometimes you don’t have to go very far to break out of the weekend routine where you live either. Keep an eye out for the oddball festivals nearby.

Related posts:

1. Belfast Festival celebrates the arts
2. The Blue Ridge Arts Scene
3. Good eats on New York’s Lower East Side
4. Montana Irish Festival

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 12th, 2009 at 8:03 am and is filed under Art and Art Museums, City or urban travel, food & drink, US travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.