Eeyore's Birthday

My son Chris and I went to one of Austin's great eccentric events, Eeyore's Birthday, named of course after Eeyore the bashful donkey in the Winnie the Pooh.

Here you can see Chris posed by a statue of the Eeyore of Liberty. The event seems to let a lot of people exercise some creativity.

The party is Austin's gathering of the hippie tribes. One of the roots of Austin's current character is that it was one of the big gathering points for old hippies after northern California got too strange for many people. Several of Austin's premier musicians headed to the Bay Area in the late 1960s or early 1970s, then headed back. I saw Doug Sahm and Asleep at the Wheel in California then, before they headed back to make Austin (or San Antonio for Doug Sahm).

There were a lot of drum circles, just like in the good old days, when I was a student in Palo Alto, 1969-73. Here is a photo of one group of drummers that we listened to for a while. There was one group that had a distinct Brazilian samba rhythm going, with the right instruments, and a nice clear beat, so we did a bit of samba dancing before moving on. (Dancing samba is one of my favorite things and this was a nice venue for it -- bit different from carnival but nicely hippie post-modern.)

Not everything was particularly hippie, mind you. Lots of people came in small themed groups, just adding to the extreme variety of what Austinites will think of. One of my favorite was the pink poodle ensemble of painted dog, cart, etc. that you see here.

There were a lot of whimsical things for people to do. Mud for kids to wade in. Lots of dogs to talk to. And a few dozen hula hoops to try out, so Chris did -- although the hoop did not stay up in motion too long. I remember them as hard to do, from when I was a kid.


Chris and Sandy had driven his car back from Utah in a fast paced trip of just two days, arriving Friday night, so he got tired after a couple of hours of wandering around Eeyore's Birthday, which is probably just about the right amount of time there anyway. Unless you are going to settle in and be part of a drum circle, which might be kind of fun next time.

So we headed home. Which reminds me of the last photo I took. The event was pretty crowded and parking hard to come by. So we took our smallest car, the Mazda Miata, and I managed to park it in a space that would have been small for a large motorcycle. Thank heavens for really learning how to parallel park back in driver's education in good old Kuna, Idaho.