TRAVEL/CULTURE

They Called It a Strawberry Festival

We drove out expecting all things strawberry

Credit: B.R. Shenoy

“Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.”

— Alexander Pope, as cited by the Poetry Foundation

I was visiting family in the DC area when my brother, his wife, and I decided to check out a strawberry festival put on by a local museum. We love that kind of thing — farmers markets, flea markets, outdoor vendors, grabbing a bite to eat while you walk around. So we were genuinely excited. A strawberry festival? Count us in.

Well. It was hot. It was packed. And we spent almost as much time standing in line to buy food as we did actually looking around. The whole thing felt more like a regular farmers market than any kind of festival. As for the strawberry theme — here’s what they had: fresh strawberries, strawberry lemonade, an ice cream sundae with strawberries, strawberry shortcake, and a guy walking around dressed as a strawberry. That was it. That was the festival.

My brother and I had been looking forward to the shortcake most of all. We finally get to the front of the line, and what do they hand us? A thick slice of pound cake with some strawberries on top and Cool Whip. Cool Whip. I don’t know what I was expecting exactly, but it wasn’t that. It was disappointing, plain and simple.

I still don’t understand why they would advertise it as a strawberry festival. Call it a summer market. Call it a community fair. But if you put the word festival in the name and lead with a theme, people are going to show up expecting that theme to actually mean something. A guy in a strawberry suit doesn’t quite get you there.

Have you ever shown up to a themed event that turned out to be something completely different from what was advertised — and what would it actually have taken to live up to the name?

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