And in between reading about the corruption of The People’s Convoy, there was a Loisaida Festival in that city of New York in that neighborhood of the Lower East Side or East Village for real estate marketing purposes, that I found myself at the other day, vending #flagsoftheworld & #iloveny necklaces, magnets, key chains & pins for $2 each and Tompkins Square Park t – shirts for $10 each in front of the Museum of Reclaimed Urban Space – MORUS at 155 Avenue C, NYC, during the Loisaida Festival, Sunday, May 29th, 12pm – 5pm, an all-day festival of artists, activists, and vendors on Avenue C. And in all honesty, the only photos I took at this festival are those few that find themselves posted above.

” As a living history of urban activism, the Museum of Reclaimed Urban Space (MoRUS) chronicles the East Village community’s history of grassroots action. It celebrates the local activists who transformed abandoned spaces and vacant lots into vibrant community spaces and gardens. Many of these innovative, sustainable concepts and designs have since spread out to the rest of the city and beyond.”

“The 2021 musical lineup included: world-renowned Mexican singer & actor Fernando Allende; Afro-Caribbean/electronic music project ÌFÉ; Puerto Rican folk singer Chabela Rodríguez; Afro-Brazilian Samba Reggae All-Female band Batalá New York, and acclaimed local contemporary R&B Soul-Jazz artist duendita as well as pop-soul singer song-writer Linda Díaz, the winner of NPR’s 2020 Tiny Desk Contest. It also featured a short film by the Puerto Rican theater troupe Y No Había Luz, a Cuchifritos cooking demonstration by María Bido part of La Cocina de Loisaida, a monologue by Loisaida Artistic Residency recipient Haus of Dust, and much more… Last year’s theme, ¡Viva Loisaida!, celebrated the Lower East Side’s roots, and the elements that characterize the neighborhood, and its residents, their resiliency, creativity, unity and growth. The official artwork for the 2021, 34th Annual Loisaida Festival was created by João Salomão, a local Brazilian artist also known as PIXOTE, whose distinctive style is heavily influenced by the Brazilian Pixação graffiti tradition. The commemorative poster for the 2021 festival was inspired by the LES punk and hip hop’s NYC graffiti scene of the late eighties and nineties that helped form João’s artistic practice. With the 2021 design, the artist also payed homage to Loisaida’s documentary photographer Marlis Momber, well known locally as the co-producer of “Viva Loisaida”; a 1982 film documenting life in the late 70’s Loisaida neighborhood. 

Since 1987 the Loisaida Festival has been the largest community celebration festival event in Lower Manhattan, and grows annually in size, excitement, and impact. Produced by Loisaida Inc., founded in 1978 and one of the last remaining Puerto Rican community organizations in the neighborhood, the Loisaida Festival epitomizes over four decades of the struggle and success of the Puerto Rican/Nuyorican diaspora that settled in the Lower East Side as had thousands of immigrants and migrants over the 19th and 20th Century. This historic place – the Lower East Side— our ‘Loisaida,’ as poet, Bimbo Rivas, coined it in the 70’s, is still the ‘Gateway’ to America, a community that embraces diversity, welcomes difference, celebrates arts and culture, and preserves, in amber and performance, the voice of all that came through this LES portal to settle in this country.” 

Have a great festival day and more, (considering that we are living in crazy times…..).