Tuesday, April 19

Cascarones at FIESTA for the Wall Street Journal

Ah, Fiesta time in San Antonio. It's our version of Mardi Gras - 11 days of parades, crowds, adult beverages, delish food, music, revelry, and afterward, mountains of trash.

This year San Antonio's Mayor Julián Castro is appealing to the better nature of the estimated 3.5 million Fiesta-goers asking them to clean  up after themselves with a new recycling initiative and more plentiful trash cans. The recycling program has taken off, but does nothing for the millions of confetti pieces left behind from the traditional cascaronesThere is an app for that, but so far the analog smashing of egg shells remains the most popular.  I'm still finding confetti in my camera bag.

Streets are clean an hour before the gates open on Night in Old San Antonio (NIOSA) in downtown San Antonio.

Edna Jimenez arranges cascarones for sale in a basket on Villita street.  Jimenez has been working the event for 28 years and estimates she sells over 2,000 of the confetti filled eggs each night of Fiesta. 

Kieran Mason, 20, left, holds Tyler Knight, 7, center, as Cameron Toomey, 19, right, cracks a cascarone over his head. Cascarones are empty egg shells filled with confetti and are cracked over the head of friends and loved ones for good luck and the fun of it.








1 comment:

  1. So much color. Looks like it was a lot of fun. Nice work amiga.

    ReplyDelete