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I think it is safe to say that New Jersey does summer better than any other state.  Go anywhere south of the Mason-Dixon line, and you’ll sweat your ass off.  Go to any other state in the Northeast, and you’ll be bored out of your mind.  Go to one of those bland Great Lakes states, and you’ll be covered in mosquitoes.  Go out west, and you’ll find states even more boring than you thought possible.

Sure, we get an influx of trashy New Yorkers here each summer, but I like to think of them and their antics as free entertainment.  Seriously, who didn’t love watching “Jersey Shore”?  And with the new season of that train wreck of a show fast approaching, people all over the world will once again see what makes summer in New Jersey so special.

One of the highlights of summer in New Jersey is the plethora of festivals at the shore and throughout the rest of the state.  Having recently gone to two of these festivals, both of which were packed full of rowdy, obnoxious people, I’m happy to say that summer in New Jersey is in full swing.

The first festival I went to was the Belmar Seafood festival, which serves all types of marine animals.  While it didn’t serve any whales, there were plenty to be found on the premises.  Anyway, as I’m not much of a seafood fan, and I was saving my appetite for another festival that night, we just got that carnival favorite known as butterfly fries.

I see Idaho hasn't taken my advice to get some new material...

So what kind of festival could be so important that I would cast aside coconut shrimp and crab cakes?  A Greek festival of course.  Who needs deep-fried bottom-dwelling shellfish, when you can have moussaka and pastitsio lovingly handmade by sweet, old Greek ladies?

Anyway, the festival was at the Kimisis Tis Theotokou Greek Orthodox Church in Holmdel, and it was packed.  After getting a whole lot of food for a reasonable $10 or so, we sat down under the tent just in time to watch some traditional Greek dancing.  Interestingly, people in the audience would go up to the dancers and shower them with money.  So in addition to making strides in medicine and philosophy, inventing the Olympics, and blessing us with the existence of John Stamos, we can also thank the Greeks for inventing the concept of throwing dollar bills at dancing girls.

So that’s the recap of my festive festival weekend in New Jersey.  Good luck finding such events in Arkansas or South Dakota or New Mexico.  Now here are some more pictures:

Taverna: Greek for hot, crowded vinyl tent

How many crabs do you think are in this one scene?

Look! It's the cast of "Jersey Shore"!

The poor man's B-Street Band

Who doesn't love unidentifiable meat on a stick?

Moussaka!

This entry was posted on June 30, 2010 at 7:31 pm and is filed under Armpit Adventures, Food, Jersey Shore. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments.

Tags: Belmar, crabs, Food, Holmdel, Jersey Shore, New Jersey, seafood