Feast of Giglio

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A friend of mine lives in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, which - I'm finding - is probably the most authentically Italian neighborhood in all of New York City. She herself is first generation Italian and she speaks and understands it fluently, from what I can tell. The kids of this neighborhood have all grown up together, know each others girlfriends, boyfriends, fathers, mothers, grandparents, children, siblings, they are all like a huge family, which is something that I just find completely mesmerizing and fantastic. One event that goes on every summer in Williamsburg - and which I've now read about from such reliable sources as Time Out, and so forth - is the Feast of Giglio. When I called it that, of course, I got a chuckle, a look and a statement that, "I guess that's how you would say it, if that's what we called it...." Regardless, I went to the Our Lady of Mt. Carmel feast last night, watched the booth workers chatting with revelers with whom they had grown up, watched my friend hugging and kissing carnival-attendees young and old, swapping gossip with the shirt vendors, and living in what seems to me to be to be a perfectly enviable world.

I also tried a zeppole -  appalling everyone when I mentioned that I had yet to eat one before. Given the fact that I am, myself, part Italian (well, Sicilian - sorry Grandma!) I do feel a bit of shame on that one, myself. Next year I'd like to come for the actual procession where they carry the statue of Giglio around the carnival and men apparently dance the tower through the streets while the band plays the Giglio Song as well as other Italian folk songs. Take my word for it, even without having seen the procession, this festival is definitely worth a trip to Brooklyn. There's carnival rides for the kids, games galore (I am now the proud owner of 4 goldfish! R.I.P Goldfish #5, who did not survive the first night...), a beer garden, and the most amazing food - sausage and peppers, fried oreos, funnel cake, all the standards and then some. Also? A zeppole is one decadence in which you simply must indulge!

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