Portland Saturday Market

For some reason there was no college football being shown here in Portland on the channels I get so I decided to stumble downtown and go to my first Saturday Market in years. There were hoards of people just out having a good time. It's amazing what vendors try and sell these day, one guy was selling postcards with simple letters drawn on in sharpie marker for $2.00 each. His cost...less than $0.02.

Vendors lined the street to sell food from all over the world. From Africa, to the South, to Vietnam, to Greece, to Thailand...which is where I picked up a plate of Pad Thai with a Thai Iced Tea for $5.50, what a deal, the food was amazing. It wasn't just the food from the Thailand booth that was cheap, the food everywhere was cheap, it took me a few minutes to decide between the Thai or the $2.00 huge corn dog, in the end it was the Thai Iced Tea that was the deciding factor for me.

The thing that really made Saturday Market was the music, from one handed guitarists to a 12 year old boy playing a drum, the streets were lined with musicians everywhere. In the food court however was where the main stage was and thats where I met the SupaDupa Marimba Boys. They met each other 5 years ago at the Portland MLC (Metropolitan Learning Center) and have been making music ever since. They play Zimbabwean music and its just all around enjoyable. They look like they enjoy what they do and are good doing it. The best thing was that they would take turn playing each instrument, and they felt at home on each one. I just happened to have my camera with me, so I shot some footage, unfortunately my camera shoots in MPEG-4 and at an "ultra high quality" and so the files which are shot in 840x480 wide screen are about 200+ MB a piece, so I had to spend hours converting them so I can post them, and after doing so they look like shit, so just take my word that they were awesome.