lowell folk festival

Lowell Folk Festival Kick-Off

I went down at 5 p.m. to help set up the UMass Lowell booth, and Boarding House Park was already filling up. The food vendors on French Street had the grills fired up and pots steaming. The crowd built by the quarter hour until there were thousands of people milling around on French Street from John to Kirk streets. I’ve been to every festival since the mid-1980s. This was one of the largest Friday night crowds I’ve seen. The parade streamed into the park on cue at 7 p.m. with horns honking and bopping. You could see the lead umbrella bobbing above the audience. After the speechifying, the bands got going — klezmer and blues and more at that stage. We ran out of free flashlight key-rings and give-a-way pens in an hour at the booth, but we had plenty of information brochures, foam visors, bookmarks, athletic schedules, and other items for the folks who pressed up against the booth tables with questions about master’s degree programs, Continuing Ed, River Hawk hockey, applications and scholarships, and such. Lots of alums (older and recent) stopped to say hi — there are 4,000 university alums in the city alone (I’ll double check that number, but I think it is correct.) The festival has become like a dog show, too. Dogs of all varieties brought their owners to the big event.