Claudia Guevara wiped her sunglasses on her denim skirt and adjusted her new Madagascar hat.
“These are bad times,” Guevara, 32, said just after buying the hat to help pay for a well in Ambalona, Madagascar, and to save a rain forest. “The sun is very bad. And I believe in the cause.”
She was among the crowds of people shopping for such exotic wares as croaking carved frogs from Thailand, dancing to live jazz music, and eating everything from alligator to cheesecake on a stick at A Taste of Colorado 2007 in downtown Denver on Saturday.
It is an eclectic Labor Day weekend festival, drawing sweet 2 1/2-year-old Kyrah Lockett – whose cherry snow cone became a puddle before she could consume it all – and a teen wearing a belt made of bullets.
The Novotnys – Jamie, Brian and Catherine, ages 12, 10 and 7 – have been posing for cartoon caricatures since before Catherine existed.
“We do this every year,” said their father, Don Novotny, 42, of Aurora. “We’ve got an entire wall of this in our living room.”
Harry Elliott, 51, swayed rhythmically to the salsa of Chilli Willi under the welcoming trees in Civic Center park.
“I’ve been coming here for 35 years,” said Elliott, a security guard. “Ladies like the way I dance.”
If you go
A Taste of Colorado continues today and Monday in Civic Center park, at Colfax Avenue and Broadway downtown.
Hours: 10:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. today; and 10:30 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday
Admission: Free, but tickets are required to purchase food or drinks. A strip of eight tickets costs $5. Ticket booths accept only cash, and ATMs are located around the festival grounds.
Parking: Available at the Coors Field parking lot, Park Avenue and Wazee Street, for $5. A free shuttle runs to the festival.
Street closures: Several streets around Civic Center are closed, most notably Colfax and 14th avenues, Lincoln Street and Broadway.
Staff writer Kirk Mitchell can be reached at 303-954-1206 or kmitchell@denverpost.com.
