THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, June 22, 1995 TAG: 9506220017
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A14 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Medium: 55 lines
Life will never be perfect, but many weekends in Hampton Roads it can be awfully good. And hereabouts the good stuff, even the best stuff, often is free. You can't beat free.
Take this past weekend.
At Town Point Park in Norfolk, the Bayou Boogaloo and Cajun Food Festival offered good food and better music. The food cost, actually, though hardly an arm and a leg. The music was loud and free. The whole outdoors was practically room temperature as the Subdudes, Dr. John, Nathan & the Zydeco Cha Chas and The Neville Brothers all wailed. These are names that excite people in New Orleans, where jazz was born and still breeds.
Families were everywhere on the park grass. Grandparents, children and grandchildren boogied together, their spirits buoyed and feet lightened by the happy music.
The Neville Brothers finished at 8 p.m. Sunday, just as Spyro Gyra was beginning at the 24th Street Stage at the Oceanfront. That concert, also free, was connected with the annual Boardwalk Art Show, which attracts artists from around the country. Musicians from all over the world performed at the Oceanfront all weekend long. The music was as regular as the surf.
You could swim, sunbathe, sightsee or shop. Life was good.
On Saturday on the Peninsula at Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement here, Native Americans from tribes across the country set history straight as part of the sixth annual Virginia Indian Heritage Festival. Admission to state-run Jamestown Festival Park was $9 for adults, but the festival was free.
So what's to do this weekend? There's always something.
The Hampton Jazz Festival runs four days, featuring such giants as Barry White, Cleo Laine and Ray Charles. That's indoors and you have to pay, but the suits and gowns you see in the crowd are worth the price of admission.
And getting back to free: The America's Sail '95 Tall Ship Festival kicks off Friday at Waterside. A parade of sails, including eight major tall ships, with soaring masts, begins at 9 a.m. near the Norfolk Naval Base and should arrive at the downtown Norfolk waterfront about 11 a.m. The public may visit the tall sailing vessels over the weekend. About 8 a.m. Monday, an informal parade of sails will escort the tall ships six miles east of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel, where a tall-ships race to a point off Long Island, N.Y., will begin at 2 p.m.
At the 24th Street Stage in Virginia Beach, the 1st Annual Oceanfront Shakespeare Festival begins with 8 p.m. performances of ``The Taming of the Shrew'' tonight through Sunday. Other plays will run Thursday through Sunday on the three following weeks. Admission is - that lovely word - free. by CNB