Itaewon Global Village Festival

Saturday Justin and I were sitting in the living room when he asked if I heard a noise. I listened and thought it sounded like bagpipes! They weren’t, they were the Korean long horn drone thingy, but it’s in the genes to go in search of bagpipes if you hear them. So we hopped up, put on shoes and headed down to the main street where we live.

I’d forgotten there was going to be a festival. Itaewon is the “global village”, it has little brass plaques in the sidewalk every block or so with how to say 'Hello' in another language, I haven’t cataloged them all, but it seems to cover everything, even the pretty obscure languages. There are also tons of restaurants that claim to have different world foods, but it’s all cooked by Koreans so it pretty much all tastes the same. Besides the food, there are innumerable shops.

When I say shops, it’s not what Americans think of. There are several types of shops; the most obvious kind are the carts. They show up every afternoon and are reminiscent of gypsy carts, they have everything from socks and underwear to knock off purses and sunglasses. They fold up into closed rectangles that are then wheeled away (somewhere) for the night.

The second kind are the more normal shops, they have a sales floor, back storage rooms, clean window displays, etc. They are the most reminiscent of “American shops”, but half the time there are several floors of the same shop. I guess it’s cheaper to buy up.

The next kind seem to be the most naturally Korean. They are stuck in every possible corner, they are the size of large walk-in closets, there is no back room with extra stock, everything is hanging on the walls and ceiling so it looks like there are no walls, just stuff. Often the floors are not level and they usually just have a roll down metal door to close at night, but otherwise they are open on the front.

The last kind is the scariest and I don’t go into them alone. They are just normal shops, for Korea, but they are huge and maze-like with no way of telling how far they reach. They have normal shop fronts but the windows are so crowded with things that you can’t see into the store, once inside, the store keeps going back and back, or down into basements or up and up. I once went in one and came out a few streets away in the back ally. Every surface is packed with products, I’m betting they don’t have a back store room either. It’s also harder to walk away when the sales people get pushy (and they always do).

The remaining business on Iteawon are night clubs, I’ve never been out at night there, but we can hear the various clubs blasting their music every night of the week. And I pass numerous drunks still waking up the next morning having passed out from too much the night before.

There are always people out on the street too, I’ve never seen it deserted. There are two main subway stops at either end of the street, and the roadway is a popular and busy road. The people who drive scooters skip the roads and drive right on the sidewalk (which is narrowed considerably by all the gypsy carts). The main area on either side of the street has sidewalks, but if you go one block to either direction(and in all of Korea) it’s just a narrow one-way road that people drive two-ways on, drive scooters on, put their trash out on and expect people to walk on too.

ANYWAY, we heard music and went to see what it was. There were people lined up in the street like they were waiting to start a parade and the far end of the street was blocked off with a huge screen and lots of chairs. There were tons of people on the sidewalk and in the street (with only half of the traffic stopped I might add). There were at least eight policemen trying to control traffic at one intersection all blowing their whistles constantly. The people in the street were in various traditional costumes and most of them had either a drum or a gong and were (semi) rhythmically banging the shit of them. There was a huge knot of people crowed around the performance area and past them was the rest of the street with white tents set up on either side all the way down to the screen with the chairs.

I spotted a big gold dragon and we followed it trying to get a better view. It was one of those that was being held up by a dozen guys with sticks who would move their sticks and it looked like the dragon was undulating along. There were also two of the 2-man dragon dancers. I was pretty excited about the dragons, and I noticed that I could see pretty well (everyone in Asia being roughly the same height as me).

We followed the dragons past the big display area (where all the performers stopped to perform in front of one set of bleachers), and down into the tent area. Most of the tents were empty and the rest had food from the surrounding restaurants. I thought it was a little silly because the restaurants were right along the street. It was like having a BBQ in your front yard when the kitchen is just one room over, except that's a bad example because it's fun to have BBQs. Anyway, we walked along the street (this section being closed to traffic minus the occasional scooter) and looked at all the booths, most of them were Korean food booths. Odd since this was a global village festival, but those were the most popular booths.

The odd thing about the parade was that they didn't have the street blocked off with police tape or saw-horses or anything, AND the people didn't stay on the sidewalk. So the volunteers in the bright yellow vests were constantly telling people to step back so the parade could squeeze through. All in all it was a huge mass of noise and whistles, gongs and drums and an announcer on a loud speaker only speaking in Korean and people wandering around in the street that was only half blocked off from traffic while the parade of performers were trying to get through.

We saw everything there was to see that night and went home to dinner.

The next day was Sunday and we had to go to the grocery store, we were out of cat food and milk plus a bunch of other things, but those two items are my cue to go. The only problem was, the street was still blocked off by the festival. So Justin and I walked to the store, bought our groceries, packed our carefully selected food into our backpacks and started the trek home. It had been a little cold the day before but on Sunday the sun was out and it was warm and there were millions of little tiny flies out en mass. At first I thought they were ash falling from all the outdoor cooking, that's how fine they were. But soon we saw they were flies, and they were everywhere. They got into your mouth, your eyes and nose, they stuck to your skin. They were the whole length of the festival route, we cut up to a side street and there were fewer flies, but when we got home we had to shower to get them all off us. I took off my shirt and they were stuck to the skin of my stomach. Weird.

That was Halloween weekend, the Koreans don't do anything for Halloween and this was the first year that I didn't either. I did buy a candy bucket (it's a black cat face) and some candy in case we got any trick-or-treaters (or so I told myself) but we didn't get any. Oh no, I guess I'll have to eat the candy myself.