VeganFest

The plan was to watch Kick Ass. I had talked about going with a friend and when I called her she said, “Oh, I’m heading to WorldFest.” “What’s that?” I asked.

“It’s this food loving festival thing. You want to come?”

I looked over their website. There were live bands, speakers, booths, and all sorts of vegetarian food. I went.

When we got there it turned out to be a Vegan Mecca. Being a meat eater, it was all about the people watching. There was a hula hoop park, a horse the size of a large dog, a dog the size of a small horse, a cow, and hundreds of normal sized dogs. Walking around was a girl wearing a giant fish head, body paint, some very strategically placed electrical tape, and not much else. A lady with a leash attached to her neck walked around in an attempt to get people to adopt animals. PeTa tshirts were everywhere alongside shirts that just said VEGAN or Animal Holocaust. Booths ranged from fortune tellers to compost heap strategists to raw food diet nutritionists. There was a booth that taught you how to be more like a plant. The trick, by the way, is to hold your hands up to the sky soaking in good energy for seven minutes. I was asked if I wanted to do this, for free, and I said no.

That is to say, I switched between grabbing free samples, talking on my cell phone, and watching all of the fantastic people as they strolled by. My friends and I spent the last hour listening to this woman, Colleen Patrick-Goudreau. She was a great speaker, but I got the impression I was not the target audience. I spent the whole time resisting laughing as I sketched.

One of my favorite quotes: “I don’t like the term vegan,” she said, “It has too many bad connotations. I’d like it if we were just referred to as ‘compassionate.’”

Here’s the sketch from that lecture. Afterwards I was talking with one of the people in line waiting for her to sign the cookbook.

“So, how long have you been following her blog?” I asked.

“Oh, I actually haven’t read it,” she said.

“What? What are you doing in this line then?”

“Well, my friend likes the blog. That counts, right?” She indicated the girl next to her.

“Yeah, it does. To be fair, I have even less right to be here. Don’t tell anyone, but I eat meat.”

She gave me a look. Her voice turned dry, “Why would you come here?”

I didn’t have a good answer. I shrugged. “Seemed like fun.”

She turned back to her friend. I headed back to mine, and soon afterwards we all took off. Point is, I still need to see Kick Ass.