Tag Archives: New York City

Blackfeet North American Indian Days – Parade

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This post has been moved to OpenChutes.com. All future postings of Powwows, Indian Relay Races, Rodeos and Rendezvous will be posted there from now on exclusively. So if you’re looking for new images and posts for all those events attended this year, plus all the old posts posted on BigShotsNow.com check out OpenChutes.com. See you there!

The North American Indian Days is an annual event held on the Blackfeet Indian reservation usually in July and is billed as one of the biggest tribal get-togethers in North America. They say North American instead of the Unites States because some of the participants are from tribes that live in Canada. It lasts for about a week, four days according to the advertisements, but everybody’s there early and leaves late so plan on at least five or six days if you want the full experience.

Parades are special events. Whether they’re in New York city or Browning Montana they’re first and foremost about people. Who they are, what they’re like, what they do, what they love, what they believe in. It’s all about gathering together and sharing their lives. The North American Indian Days parade is no different. On a slightly overcast morning everyone that wasn’t in the parade gathered to watch it. The street filled up early with spectators and there wasn’t a space along the parade route that you could fit a folding chair into. Excitement began to build as you could hear the sirens of the escorts leaving the staging area a mile away. Suddenly two dogs, apparently unable to stand the suspense, took it upon themselves to open the parade by setting the pace for the oncoming participants. The crowd loved it and gave them a rousing round of applause.

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As always the colors were presented and led in by the towns police cars.

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First came the leaders

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Then individuals

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Then came the North American Indian Days royalty

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Queens

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and Princesses

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Those who serve

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Those who remember

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Those who can never forget

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New generations

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 Those who love their heritage

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Those who participate

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Those who value togetherness

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Those who leave their mark

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Those just beginning

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Those who pass on their values

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Those who follow in their footsteps

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Those with youth and vitality

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Those who are proud of their past and who they are

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Those who look to the future

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Those that love life

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And those that bridge the past and the present.

This was a splendid parade, a handmade parade, full of all the strength and enthusiasm of a people who know who they are and celebrate it. It wasn’t a big flashy money driven parade with huge balloons and large floats but it didn’t need those. This parade was created with love and pride and a sense of continuity of people who have lived this life for a long time and will continue to live it no matter how they adapt to the future. Their past, their heritage, will always be a part of how they face whatever comes next.

On A Rock

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OnARock                                                             click to enlarge

Build your house upon a rock. The Anasazi took that advice to heart. Their buildings in Mesa Verde are still standing in nearly livable condition after seven, eight  hundred years. Well, not all of them of course. The ones built before they brought in zoning and building codes sometimes just fall down, but that doesn’t change the soundness of the advice.

People look at a scene like this and say “Where’s the rest of it? Where’s the rest of the building?” They fail to see the genius behind the Anasazi’s plan. This was never supposed to be a completed building. This is a stage prop. The Anasazi were incredible actors. They not only acted, they wrote their own plays, built backdrops, put on shows that would rival anything on Broadway today. It was why all the trails led to Mesa Verde, it was the Great White Way of its time.

There have only been fragments found of the marquees that trumpeted some of their greatest productions, such as dramas, like

Bringing In The Maize

Romeo and Juliet

My Metate, My Mano

and Mysteries such as,

Who Hit Lenny With a Stone

My Acorns Are Missing

The Case Of The Half Eaten Dog

The Encyclopedia Salesman And The Farmers Daughter

You Wanna See My Pestle

Don’t Do That Again, You’ll Get A Hernia

The comedies may seem a little coarse and unsophisticated by today’s standards, but remember these early people were living in a rock apartment building with no central heating or AC, kind of like they do in Detroit and parts of New York city. They needed some diversion.

The next time you’re visiting some ancient culture’s living conditions and you wonder “How come they did that?” or think “Jeez, I’d a never done that.” remember these folks were different than you. They were shorter. They pretty much only ate corn and the occasional dog. They got bored easy. They couldn’t just run over To Wal-Mart and get stuff, there was no Wal-Mart. Try and figure out the reason they did weird stuff. You may find out they weren’t so goofy after all.

Steppin’ Out

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Everyone has got a favorite city. Some vote for LA, others for San Francisco or Seattle. Some of the poor misguided even think New York city is the place. Mine was always New Orleans. Then I went to San Antonio and now I have to say oh yeah, that is a cool city. Some of you are going to say “What the hell, that’s in Texas!” and I have to say “I know, but you have to go there.”

What makes a city cool, besides how it looks and what you can do there, is the people. Just like New Orleans people can’t help but be cool in San Antonio. They’re friendly, they don’t spit on the sidewalk, well, OK I did see one girl do that, but she cleaned it up. She chewed and she said she was just tired of swallowing that stuff. She felt bad about it. The folks there like to gather in cool places and watch each other and they do it all with a coolness that’s just, well, cool.

One of the best places to go to see and be seen with the cool people is San Antonio’s Riverwalk. I know it’s considered touristy but that doesn’t make it any less cool. Sitting alongside the river with a Texas girl with big hair, seeing the sparkly stuff in her mascara come alive as the light hits it, sipping something cool and full of Tequila, listening to her say “Y’all” a bunch, is time well spent and I highly recommend it. You can people watch and see the lights come on at sunset, watch the boats go up and down the river full of people laughing and asking the guide how deep the river is (5′) and just revel in the feel of the quiet evening as the sun goes down.

It’s a place where you put on your best threads and strut your stuff. The guy above is a yellow-crowned Night Heron and you can see by his name, night is when he comes alive. By day he’s a mild-mannered carton stacking specialist down at the UPS terminal, wearing his brown outfit with the brown baseball cap, bill facing forward as per the company dress code, but at night, watch out. That’s when he shines. It takes a lot of confidence to put on his yellow feathers and his stripey pimp coat, but he pulls it off as if he were born to it. Many, many ladies were checking this bad boy out as he struts up the birdwalk.

If you’re thinking, you know I’m kind of sick of my favorite city. I’m bored and I need someplace new. Someplace fresh and alive. Then you’d best get on down here to San Antonio as people who talk Texan say. You’re missing the good times.

Spa Day

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It’s Friday again, I know, how could that happen, it was just Monday a minute ago but it is. And as you know this is the day we give you ideas on what to do over the weekend. This weekend we thought we might offer something a little different. Last weekends suggestion of jetting off to Cape Disappoint on the Washington coast in your private jet was a big hit with some of you. Actually very few of you but the ones who went said it was great.

This weekend we decided to scale it down a bit and offer something for the ladies out there. That’s a big fat Spa day! Guys can go along too, but I’d recommend skipping the pedicure session Saturday morning. Ladies and some who aren’t really, like spa days and find it a big treat to go to them and have stuff done to them that they can’t get done in the privacy of their own homes.

So what can you do at a spa and more importantly what can be done to you in a spa, you might ask. Well lucky for you, you’ve come to the right place for answers. Listed below, in no particular order, are spa treatments you can order at your local spa, or if they’re unavailable there, where you can go this weekend to get them.

First is a Snake massage.

Hop over to Israel where you can get a massage from several non-venomous snakes as they slither up and presumably down your spine. Cost $70 US.

Or try your choice of the Tea, Coffee,red wine, sake, or Ramen noodle bath in Japan.

This is one is a little closer to home and I’ll bet to ladies hearts. That’s the chocolate wrap you can get at the spa in Hershey, Pa. They will wrap you or more concisely smear chocolate all over you and they mean all over and then leave you alone for a while. As a guy I have to wonder why they would leave you alone for a while but women do some strange stuff so we’ll just leave it at that.

Gold. In Japan, they give you a gold facial. That’s gold painted on your face for as long as you want it there. The cost, a measly 250 bucks, and I gotta say that if you can afford the plane ticket to Japan and back that’s pretty darn reasonable.

How about a cactus massage? In Mexico you can get rubbed, whacked, stroked or whatever with a spineless cactus paddle and pay for it. The cost $245. It doesn’t say whether that is in peso’s or dollars

And for those of  you with more agrarian roots there is a Wet Hay Wrap in Italy where you get wrapped in wet hay harvested from the meadows of Alpe di Siusi between mid-July and early August then lie on a special 100° waterbed until they harvest you I guess. As a special bonus for those of you who make it you receive a foot treatment where a fish named the Garra Rufa eat away whatever may be lurking on your feet.

I saved the most special treatment for last. That’s the Fanny Facial.  I know it seems like a contradiction in terms but that’s how it’s listed. In New York City, like where else except maybe most of California, can you get a fanny facial? I mean it’s strange even asking the question. What happens is you go in and ask for this deliberately, obviously they don’t just give you one without asking, then they perform a exfoliation of the fanny areas with a papaya-mint scrub, followed by a micro-current therapy where they apparently zap your hiney with low-voltage current to remove in their words, “any lumps or bumps from your butt”, then the whole business is finished with an organic spray tan so your fanny glows like the noon day sun. This has got to be special people. The cost was not revealed but I got to say it has to be worth it.

So those are just some of the treatments available to the Spa goer. Yes they may seem a little irregular to those who don’t frequent spas regularly or that only go to low rent ones where these special treatments aren’t available but our job is to bring you the newest and trendiest things out there, and these were certainly out there.

The ladies pictured above have just completed Yellowstone’s interpretation of a spa which is, as you can see, a snow spa, where you can spend a leisurely hour or two in the sub-zero waters of the Yellowstone river, then be rubbed down by brawny park rangers with snow before finishing the day next to a warm geyser. Upon asking we found that the Fanny Facial is not offered in Yellowstone.

There you have it. That’s the special weekend activities for you ladies. I’m sure you can’t wait to “hit the spa” as they say somewhere I’m sure. For you guys I might remind you that there’s a game on almost every minute of the weekend and beer in the fridge. Just give her the credit card and don’t ask.