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So happy America’s Birthday, everybody. You know what you’re getting it next year? You’re going to put on a rainbow-colored afro wig and blast children with a super soaker from the back of a dump truck wearing flashing ‘America’ sunglasses.

Everyone within the sound of my electro-voice needs to be in the Fishtown Horribles Parade next year. Everyone, all of us. We went last night and clearly it’s one small step from being just a bunch of khaki-clad politicians wandering around with people wearing their T-Shirts. It was as if Kim Ill Sung left North Korea and was put in charge of a regional insurance carrier.

Notes in the bullet points you demand from us, at knifepoint:

A HUGE clam “Eff Yah!” to those who did turn out and who did something cool I’m gonna miss folks, but overall Smith Hardware had a great float. So did the Y, Art Haven, Lego Lady Liberty, people dressed as schooners,  the hockey kids, the cheerleaders, the Farmer’s Market, the “Sad Parade”, Anisquam Players doing Peter Pan, bagpipers, calypso band, dancers, gymnasts and great marching bands. Dude squirting people with a hose from the cement mixer, huzzah to you sir. You are our hero. Large elephant that was on Route 114 when we were a kid, great seeing you there. Anyone generally loony and costumed, we salute you. CLAM HUZZAH TO YOU ALL!

That elephant is totes hipster

Veterans If you’re a veteran, you can be in any parade ever forever. That’s the rule. Jesus, we should be carrying those guys in sedan chairs considering what a lot of them have been through. Veterans, including Veterans for Peace, always get to be honored in any parade.

The church with the big cross float Some people complained about this, but I’m like “At least they were there and doing stuff with a well made float”. If we were there with a huge Star of David or a Flying Spaghetti Monster or somebody had a huge statue of Ganesh we hope folks would be cool with that.

Isn’t there an Italian restaurant that can sponsor this?

But you need to have a fricking float! Look kids, I’m as lazy as the next person, if there is a next person (I can’t bother to look). But you gotta do something more than just tape a hand-drawn paper sign on the side of a Chrysler and call yourself a float, unless your float is “World’s Most Craptastic Parade Float” in which case, again, huzzah.

When they throw candy, it hurts

Politicians, WTF  The biggest complaint of this year was the hordes of politicos in matching T-shirts. Look, we know a bunch of the folks in the political groups, we know a couple of the candidates themselves even and they are great people doing important work. The pols we know are good folks and I mean that on both sides of the political aisle. But it seems like the Horribles Parade without any other content to break it up has morphed into some kind of odd whistlestop tour. Next year there needs to be a simple requirement: If you political float is more than one car and ten people then you and your folks need to randomly pull items out of a community-supplied chest full of feather boas, lighted headwear, sparkly platform shoes, masks and your entire group must perform at least one (1) choreographed dance routine every 200 yards or fewer.

Bruce Tarr? We’re all thinking of Bruce in this, right?

“But Jim, I’m your friend Steve from Australia. Surely you don’t mean for all The Clam’s entire readership to be in the parade? I’m 15 thousand miles away.” Shut up Steve and get over here. EVERYONE is in the parade next year. Everyone. It’s going to make the Haj look like the line for carob-covered kale popsicles at Fiesta. You can be on a float called “Longhaired Aussies Who Love Jimmy Buffett For Some Reason.” Book now, it will be cheaper.

So there will be a Clam float everyone can be on? Yes and no. There will be a Clam float. Oh yes, mark our words, if we are out of jail and still able to show our faces on the streets The Clam will be there, along with family and one or another close followers selected for their ownership of large construction vehicles and access to hepatitis-free circus monkeys we can dress up as strippers. But one additional float will not be enough. We need tons of people out there to turn this thing around.

What should I do? Thinking is hard! This part is actually simple: what is your “Thing”? Are you a Trekkie? Do you love Game of Thrones as apparently everyone on the entire Internet does and won’t shut up about?  Do you have a bizarre fetish involving kitchen utensils? THIS IS YOUR TIME! It’s the freaking Horribles Parade. Here, we’ll help: Close your eyes and shake your head a little. Now open them. The first thing you see is what you’re going as next year. Apparently I am dressing up as the classic board game Yahtzee, which we were playing last night after we got home. Fine. Who can lend me a professor hat? See? Simple as that.

When we were young every year Perennial Mayoral candidate Dan Ruberti would come out in his K-Car done up in some weird way. He was a UFO one year. He was a gladiator another. His floats consisted of tin foil and stuff he found.  Shep and the Artspace folks would do something semi-comprehensible. There was a family where Mom and Dad were the Cut Bridge and their kids were little boats. There was that lady who was a flower or a rocket or…something? Yes, yes and yes. More of that.

Ironically, as it stands Rockport gets the horribles concept better than Gloucester. Sorry, but this is true. No matter. See everyone next year.

Clam, out.

While enjoying the brilliant and beloved spectacle of St. Peter’s Fiesta this annum, we here at The Clam took a moment to ponder what could possibly be added to make Fiesta better. It was hard. Fiesta is amazing on its own. But, here we are.

1. Blessing of the Monday Morning Post-Fiesta Street Sweeper Fleet. Let’s not kid ourselves- this is a job fraught with danger. You ever seen what happens when half a ton of green, white, and red confetti gets stuck in those bristles? We’ve lost the limbs of good men that way. Poor Ed, never did get used to making an Old Fashioned with one arm.

Not pictured: carnival ride vomit stuck to bristles.

2. Ceremonial Fishing All The Grease Out Of The Water. Do you know how much you can get for locally crafted artisinal, reclaimed crisco/red grease mixture? How do you think everyone in Bed-Stuy repacks the bearings in their fixies? If we get kids to do it, we can keep labor rates down and keep more of the sweet hipster cash for ourselves. This grease has a story, man, and that story is something we can sell to people who wear stupid hats.

This fucker would totally buy artisinal grease.

3. Annual Fixing The Fort’s Potholes Ourselves Thankyouverymuch. Everybody that lives in the Fort gets a shovel, beach sand, some Cape Pond Ice, crushed bits of concrete fallen from the facade of Good Harbor Fillet, and lobster shells and packs in those potholes best they can. It’s better that way than if a hotel ever moved in and paid for new infrastructure, when you think about it. Let’s leave it this way forever!

Hmm, needs more fear of change.

4. The Let’s Watch the Joan of Arc Statue This Time and Make Sure Nobody Fucks With It Parade: Self explanatory. How did no one see this happen when there’s four mounted state policemen around the corner and approximately seven thousand people hanging out on porches directly facing the statue? I think it’s a conspiracy. Additional note: “Going on a bender” is supposed to be euphemistic, fuckers.

Fiesta Aliens. It’s the only explanation.

5.  Red Solo Cup Race: This event will take place at approximately 11:32 PM on Fiesta Friday. A police officer will descend upon an underage drinking party (on purpose or accidentally on his way to get an Ambie’s sausage) and all patrons located inside said party will race to the exits as fast as possible. Slowest one gets court on Monday and is grounded for, like, the whole summer.

C’MON, WE WERE *THIS* CLOSE TO SEEING BOOBS.

Perhaps if we wish upon a greasy pole long enough, we can make some of these new Fiesta traditions come true. One can only hope, right?

[Ed: I (Jim) asked my most excellent cousin Abby to write something for The Clam about coming back to Gloucester after a long time and seeing it afresh. “Maybe make a funny list about Fiesta!” I said. I forgot that she is, like, a real writer and can actually create compelling narratives using language and not just hack together some bullet points with some snarkly captioned pictures. Wow. She is good]

Her reply begins: What I forget about, until yesterday, is that I fucking love the greasy pole competition. If you need to say anything about me, you can say that I grew up in West Gloucester, that I’ve worked as a writer, teacher, and roadie, and that I once crashed a golf-cart into Cher’s giant wire elephant prop.

Yes you read that correctly

Fiesta Sunday After Fifteen Years Abigail Greenbaum My most recent (and, to be honest, only) moment of entry into Gloucester royalty came during an innocent Pre-K romance with the son of a fisherman. We held hands, pretended the jungle gym was a ship (poop deck included), and he told me that his father would bring me a mermaid. Later, checking under my bed for the promised sea-lady, I realized two important things: sometimes boys lie, and Gloucester is a place where unlikely and magical things seem possible. Such as: dozens of men, more than a few in their fifties, dressed as cartoon characters, Hula dancers, animals, and clowns walking along a greased wooden pole in order to grab a flag and some serious honor and glory. I left Gloucester at eighteen, right when some boys my age were starting their careers as greasy pole walkers, and yesterday, after fifteen years living elsewhere, I sat with my father and sister on Pavilion Beach for the championship round. Though my family is neither Italian nor Catholic nor true Gloucester natives, we’ve always loved Fiesta Sunday. My dad attended his first Blessing of the Fleet as a teenager, right after his oldest brother moved to town. Part of me wanted to know if Fiesta Sunday would still feel like magic, the kind of thing that couldn’t happen anywhere else in the world. Part of me just missed the show.

You know who else puts on an amazing show? Cher. That’s who.

The teenagers on the beach were taking selfies (#greasypole), and more kayaks and paddleboards clustered around the pole, but other than that, the scene was pretty much as I remembered. Grandmothers threw up their hands at small children as they returned from the shoreline, covered in Saturday’s grease. Girls sported white dresses and great tans. The Seine boats took forever to line up. “Anybody ever thought to use a cable for this?” an old man in a beach chair behind me shouted across the crowd. “St. Peter save us all.”

St. Cher on a novena candle

The wind was up for the boat race and the courtesy round, and the walkers were off to a slow start. The older guys seemed to have better style when they fell off, years to perfect the bone-preserving backward dives and flips away from the pole. For the first time, I realized that the only reason anyone ever reached the flag was because in the carnage of the early walks, most of the grease was wiped from the first half of the pole.

Soon, though, the clouds parted and the late afternoon sunlight hit the harbor the way it only does in Gloucester, and the crowd, no longer annoyed about race delays, was cheering every time someone neared the flag. I wished friends from my non-Gloucester life were on the beach with me, because really, how could I ever explain how awesome it is when someone wins, and when the blood and grease-streaked walkers, still half in the water, hoist him on their shoulders?

The carnies, their rides empty, were leaving the festival grounds to watch. Carnies tend to be a tough and jaded bunch, but Fiesta Sunday impresses even them.

—

Thanks Abby! Even our crappy Cher jokes could not diminsh your awesome! –JD

The Clam’s of a kind staff photographer, Steve Brosnihan, is back again. After a few mix-ups that could be attributed to editor/staffer miscommunication, we decided to give Steve a very easy task. One no one could mess up. We asked him to take some pictures of Fiesta. “Great!” we thought, “He will come back with some excellent photos of confetti, children dressed in white, and carnival rides!”

This is what we got.

The Sixth Hour: Viva Siesta

While at one of the many parties and late-night open mics we frequent, my machete wielding employers asked me to produce a photo piece about something they call ‘Siesta.’ Over a very loud Fela Kuti cover they described Siesta as a colorful, local event full of pageantry and revelry that goes on for days. I kept trying to connect the revelry to the essence of an afternoon nap taken by Spaniards to evade the hottest hours of the mid-day sun and whereby they can prepare for a late day at work and long, elaborate evening meal. I was intrigued and excited to think that our fair city would host such an abstract, conceptual performance piece annually.  As the music crescendoed with blaring brass and drums, KT described a few puzzling images including something about cross dressers on a greased telephone pole. I never turn down a challenge, especially when enticed to partake in surrealism, so I agreed to take on the assignment.

An 11th year blow-in, I consider Gloucester my home now, but this Siesta thing has eluded me. The staffers insisted that I document the event during my annual family camping trip to New Hampshire. We take it right after the kids get out of school at the end of every June. When I mentioned to the Clamsters that I would have to cover Siesta from up there, they shrugged and said “OK.” Conceptual indeed!

To get in the mood, I dusted off my old CD of Marcus Miller and Miles Davis playing “Music from Siesta” the soundtrack from the somewhat obscure 1987 art film by Mary Lambert and put it on repeat for the 4 hour drive. If traveling alone, I would have played my vinyl copy, but the 3-axis active turntable isolation gimbal takes up too much space in the family minivan. I had to settle for the grainy harshness of digital. Anything for the kids. For imagery, I loaded some fresh film into my newly acquired Rolleiflex SL 35M sporting a Zeiss licensed 50mm f 1.8 planar: Six blades of Petzval-like bokeh when wide open. The fungus in the lens is minor, worse in the pentaprism, but it’s still a great shooter. Every time I lift the camera to my face, I can smell the basement that the camera must have been stored in for the past 30 years. Odors always activate my memories. This species of mold must have also inhabited the day bed I often napped on as a kid over at my grandmother’s house—a perfect ambiance for the task at hand. In honor of the sixth hour after dawn, all the shots happened under the glare of a bright midday orb.

I briefly toyed with the idea of scheduling our annual camping trip later in the summer next year but finally decided that the mystery of Siesta should forever continue as a haunting dream-state in the annals of my family lore. Viva Siesta!