The Chalk Festival.

We are lucky to have on the 4th floor of Castle Green two nonprofits, the Friends of Castle Green and the Light Bringers.

The Friends of Castle Green is headed by neighbor T. Capote and was the power behind Castle Green’s Tour, before it was ripped from them by the Castle Green Home Owners Association. I don't know what their activities are now. I do know that the HOA is interested in getting the funds the Friends raised over the years. The HOA insists they'll use money as it's intended, to enhance the Castle. I fear their idea of enhancement. I'm it has something to do with turning this place into a full time wedding venue.

Still active, not quelled by the HOA, though they take all their notices of events down from the Castle elevator, are the Light Bringers, the other nonprofit. They are the organization behind much of what I like about Pasadena, the rare counter culture art shows and non-symphony concerts. They also carry the weight of "the other parade", the one besides the Rose Parade. Without them there would merely be The Bunny Museum to keep Pasadena interesting.

The Light Bringers most recent offering was the Chalk Festival, which occurs every June. The Chalk Festival is an almost entirely highly skilled chalked art festival, one too hot summer weekend a year in the outdoor plaza of the otherwise uninteresting and too upscale Paseo Colorado, Old Town Pasadena's mall.

T. Capote, of the Friends, thinks the Chalk Festival is purely graffiti, after all they're drawing on sidewalks. This proves to me he's older than he is gay. I pointed out to him that Paseo Colorado has nothing of real interest besides the Antique Mall, so that smearing it in chalk, even if it is graffiti, is an improvement. The elder Capote conceded the point.

Let us now examine the Light Bringers as people. Behind these counter culture efforts, at least counter Pasadena culture, is a middle age couple. I say middle age because I suspect I am now and Jenny, the woman, is my age. Steve, the male component of the couple is older, but still safely in the middle age bracket. I think I'm on the young side.

Steve is the face and embodiment of the Light Bringers, speaking at semi counter culture openings and putting on surprisingly tasteful suits for grant pleas. I don't think they have the money for tasteful suits, so these must come out of the funds they raise, which is legitimate since other than these couple suits he only has blue jeans, but he cuts a dashing figure in them still, due to his Oscar Wilde haircut. 

Oscar Wilde haircut

Jenny is the paperwork, organizational, hands-on but faceless part of their operation. She clearly pays for her own clothes. They are mid-western and plain, though she occasionally puts on odd little bits of jewelry or stray happy colors, a bit like a Christmas tree rather than coordinated with an outfit. She is the kind of “pleasant looking” that would be pretty, if she ever went for it.

Now, the mystery of the Light Bringers’ personal lives. The personal lives of the couple behind the non-profit. Are they a couple? 

Some say the man is gay, but he isn't. Bisexual in his head, not even in practice, is the most I'll give him. He's flirted with me but he has also commented on my husband’s good looks once or twice in the years we've lived here. It could just be an aesthetic thing, an appreciation of Leif's pretty Nordic face behind his nerd glasses. It's completely submerged now anyway, now that they know us better. 

Before it submerged I swear Jenny would move over whenever we joined them and the other salon drinkers, to give me the seat besides Steve. I admire his Oscar Wilde hair but I love Leif; she didn't know that yet though and I guess was extending me a courtesy.

Though Jenny is played down or I guess never learned to play up, she is clearly feminine in a way that I can't imagine a smart heterosexual man would miss. That is why I am convinced the Light Bringers have "done it".

To put it more maturely, I am convinced they are an item, but no one, even the Friends of Castle Green, their friends of 20 years, know for sure. This is the mystery. Nobody knows if they're a couple, but everybody has a conjecture or conclusion. Mine is that they are, but many more people are sure they're not. Sex is biologically possibly between them, though biologic difficulty has never stopped anyone. I'm sure they've done it, at least once in the history of the nonprofit.

But the heart of the mystery remains. Were they ever “together”? Are they still a couple? Are they prolonged life partners? Based on their two shared spaces (their apartment here and another alleged offsite), in combination with my careful detective work, I say yes. I will discuss my detective work later, but now on to The Chalk Festival.

If anyone asks, Leif and I have attended every year, but given my extreme heat intolerance (I faint and sweat unattractively and profusely. I do not belong in Pasadena in the summer) we only sometimes attend. The same by the way is true of the Light Bringers other cultural events, we only sometimes attend (we sometimes prefer to watch TV) but this year we did.

Induced by the opportunity to get groceries on the way back, we headed out to Paseo Colorado on Saturday of the Chalk Festival. Leif will rarely go anywhere happily on the weekend. Like little kids I babysat he wants to "do nothing", and I can't fairly debate his tiredness because he works full time and I don't. But the Chalk Festival is so clearly in the Castle Green bubble, he ventured out not too grudgingly.

Past Gelsons, and parallel to the Convention Center, where we’d recently seen a mock up-of Space X (picture of my troll doll taken on the actual scene), we mounted the steps to Paseo Colorado. Chalk dust was in the air.

 Pasadena Convention Center's "SPACEX" event

Every drawing was much much better than I can do, including a monster being chalked by two 12 year old boys. "He's handsome", I said. "Thanks", said the boy less covered in chalk dust. He presumably was their spokesman. He was also holding the sheet with the original drawing of the monster that they were going on. All the artists were going off a picture, their own work or one of the "great works" (as seen in museums) reinterpreted in chalk. I'd choose an Impressionist piece myself, since whatever I attempted to draw in chalk would end up Impressionist.

Interestingly one artist, a teenage girl, didn't have an original but neither was she drawing out of her head. She had a mirror, the giant hand held dime store kind, she was holding and drawing herself from. There was chalk on her mirror but none on her. It was impressive. 

Her picture looked like her. I couldn't do that, so I assume she was good, but more remarkable, to me at least, was that she wasn't sweating. All the artists were sweating in the 97 degree weather that keeps me away from Chalk Festival most years, even her picture looked a little sweaty, but she didn't.

Someone else was watching this artist, Jenny who, along with Steve, was responsible for the chalk cloud now over Paseo Colorado.  Leif gave a pleasant though undecipherable greeting I translate to “hi.” I'm shy, Leif is shyer. Unfazed by lameness, Jenny smiled, "Have you met Luna? She's our intern".

"Hi", I said to the intern. She barely looked up. Just enough I could see she was fairly pretty. I wasn't sure what to say about her picture, complimenting it was like commenting on the girl's face, because it looked just like her.

Steve didn't hold back. He had joined Jenny, standing over the girl, and now said, "very pretty". "Thank you, Steve", she gushed, the first words I'd heard her say. Jenny gave me a slightly ill look. I smiled back sympathetically.

"He wants her", I told Leif on our grocery laden walk home. "She hot", he shrugged. I translated "hot" as 17 and cute, which I guess is hot if you know how to work it. I didn't. I couldn’t work it till my 20s but at least I had. I don't think Jenny ever did and it gave Steve his security. Now, back to my harmless experiments to see if they were a couple.

One evening on the porch Steve mentioned, in passing to those assembled and therefore drinking, that he had a giant chicken costume currently in his possession. I wasn't nearly as concerned with why as I was with seeing it. Using my manipulative bully techniques I goaded him into modeling it by suggesting he was lying and demanding that he prove he had a chicken suit. “Yes”, said Ian, good looking Caltech grad student with a German girlfriend he didn’t end up marrying, "Prove it". I appreciate that he understood how to play Steve.

Steve, who is in some ways (some that I respect) immature, needed no further goading. About 10 minutes later, as the Capotes were extolling an art exhibit that featured identical Russian twins 15 years ago at the Huntington, Steve reappeared in his chicken suit. It was gloriously, no holds barred chicken-y. He looked like a Fosters Freeze chicken on the lam, one who had consumed several too many grain steroids.

I marveled. The chicken sat down to drink. While his face was obscured by his chicken head, it was still possible to drink through the chicken mouth which had been left open for the costume wearer to see through, but Steve preferred to drink through it.

A few more drinks and the chicken was posing for pictures, in the lobby next to the impressive portrait of Colonel Green then back to the porch for candid bystander and chicken shots. It was then, when Jenny sat for her photo op with the chicken, that bad thoughts rose up in me: make trouble, explore theory thoughts.

"Sit in the chicken's lap", I said. Jenny didn't say anything in response. Neither did the chicken. "Chicken's lap", I insisted. Jenny looked uncomfortably at the chicken, didn't get up but didn't sit in his lap. I was hoping the chicken would pull her on to his lap, in a revealing romantic moment, but then Ian decided to sit on the chicken's lap. I have that picture. From Jenny's refusal to sit on the chicken's lap I determined not a platonic relationship, but a romantic relationship in some turmoil.

giant chicken on Castle Green porch.

Then there was the time I worked it into conversation, "Why didn’t you and Steve ever get married?". "I don't know,” said Jenny; she didn't say, "Huh?” Then there's their 4th floor Light Bringers office at Castle Green where they sometimes crash. There is only one bed.

I have seen Steve in business meetings in the castle lobby with pretty women. I have seen Jenny only with Steve.

The evening after the Chalk Festival he was in fact meeting with a pretty girl, the teenage self portrait artist from the festival. She hadn't changed clothes. She didn't need to. There was no chalk on her. I didn't see Jenny that evening though I heard Steve at night in the hall, talking too fast on his cell phone.

Morning saw me back at the Chalk Festival. I was determined to take in more culture. The boys’ monster had been exed out in chalk, and another monster was being draw next to it. "Hi", said the 12 year old spokesman, remembering me from yesterday. "Draw some buildings in the picture", I said. "We will" he said, then conferred with his partner, the 12 year old doing the grunt work.

More impressive art had sprung up today, some had been continued from the day before. They cover the pictures in loose paper-bag paper over night; I assume protecting the chalk without touching it.

I saw Luna at work on her self portrait. "Hi, Luna", I said. She looked at me like she'd never met me. Then Steve came over and put his arm around her, complimenting the portrait. I didn't like the portrait anymore. She'd changed it, the chalked face was still realistic and looked like her, but not as much. Luna had a relatively sweet 17 year old face, whereas the picture was smirking.

When I got home Jenny was in the lobby by herself, not at the Chalk Festival. "Hi”, I said, “shouldn't you be playing in chalk?”. "I didn't feel like it", she said, "too much paperwork to do". Jenny seems to be the paperwork person for most their events, but it was weird that she'd started it already when the festival was still going on.

Usually she and Steve reunite in the evening in the lobby over drinks, but I didn't see him that night. I saw the Capotes sitting solicitously with Jenny, maybe a little too quiet.

I made it to Paseo Colorado in the morning, early enough to beat the steam cleaners and look at Luna's picture. Luna wasn't there, the festival was over and Paseo Colorado was back to business, as much business as a mall that features Macy's and Brookstones is going to get. Abandoned by the artists, the pictures were still there.  I walked by myself to Luna's portrait. She'd clearly done more work on it yesterday afternoon. The girl’s face in the portrait looked older, and a little mean, but I couldn't be sure because Luna wasn't there to compare it to.

I didn't see Steve and Jenny at the Castle for a few days and the pictures at Paseo Colorado disappeared, steamed away by Paseo Colorado's steam cleaners. There was a billboard announcing a concert series next weekend, more Pasadena standard culture. I missed the boys’ monster and exed out monster. I hope they got to consume the city before the steam cleaners got to them. I didn't miss Luna’s picture. I was glad the steam cleaner had gotten to her before she could do more damage.

It wasn't long before Steve and Jenny were back again at the Castle, drinking with the Capotes of an evening. Jenny was a little quieter and Steve seemed a little more awkward with her, but times passes and everything goes back to normal.

beautiful chalk monster courtesy of http://twitteringbird.blogspot.com