Sunday, April 12, 2015

Cherry Blossom Festival

I spent Saturday afternoon with a friend, walking around the Cherry Blossom Festival, which is taking place over 2 weekends in Japantown. The event was densely crowded with young people, & there were long lines at the food stalls. A lot of people showed up in costumes.

The origami exhibit was in a small but lively space.

This mask with astonishing facial details must be by Joel Cooper.

Origami artist Linda Mihara explained that this huge structure, still under construction, is a Level 3 Menger Sponge, a fractal sculpture composed of thousands of folded, interlocking business cards. It's part of an even larger, virtual construction whose components are distributed around the world.

Ms. Mihara also made sure we visited the Paper Tree store to see this scaly dragon, folded from a 6 foot square of paper.

At the end of the day we found the Hello Kitty Cafe Truck, which had a line half a block long. Fans were waiting to buy donuts, petit fours & macarons. Just as we got there, though, 3 cops came & shut it down. My companion inquired what the trouble was, & apparently Hello Kitty is not allowed to serve customers past 6:00pm.

§ 48th Annual Northern California Cherry Blossom Festival
April 11, 12, 18, 19
11a - 6p
San Francisco, Japantown

3 comments:

Patrick J. Vaz said...

It's good to hear that the authorities are keeping a close eye on Hello Kitty.

Civic Center said...

Did they try to shake Hello Kitty down for money first? Seems about par for the course for our SFPD.

Axel Feldheim said...

Yes, there is clearly something shady about the the whole thing. Come to think of it, I might have seen the cops walking away with a box of donuts...