Going Rouge

Let me ask you this outright: What do you think when you hear Fresno? Is your answer in the Podunk, middle-of-nowhere, or perhaps fly-over category? Do you see a wasteland where the only culture is in the yogurt, art left town with a museum that long ago was unable to pay its bills, and entertainment is something between Monster Trucks and that jumping/flipping motorcycle thing they do?

When Johnny Carson’s monolog was in danger of bombing he could always pull the crowd back with a Fresno barb. It’s been a punch line in Thelma and Louise, Monsters vs. Aliens, and Captain America. But is there a shred of another side to the Raisin Capitol of the World? A more sophisticated side?

Somewhere between the orange groves in the foothills and the vineyards on the west side, between the older homes with swamp coolers hanging from their windows and the newer McMansions with 8 ½ X 11 computer paper foreclosure notices taped to theirs, and between the Subaru’s of Old Fig Garden and the Suburbans of Clovis I stumbled into something I didn’t know existed in the town of my birth.

It’s called the Rouge Festival and it takes place over ten days in the Tower District in the center of town. The people who put it on call it a, “swirling circus of originality and creativity.” It’s basically a bunch of acts in different venues over 10 days.

Walking the sidewalks from venue to venue, crowded with people on their way to or from a show and performers passing out flyers was like being in another town. When I explained to one of our friends how when I was a kid we would wait in line to see Disney movies at the tower theater and when I found the New Deal WPA stamp in the sidewalk across from the Chicken Pie Shop it was like being in a different Fresno.

On Saturday we went to three shows, all comedies.

The first was called, “Confessions of a Church Organists.” It was true stories from a man who played the organ in a Catholic church, and at weddings and even the old Pizza and Pipes restaurant. It was nostalgic, somewhat vulgar, and most importantly; funny.

The second act was someone called Captain Scurvy. He was kind of like George Carlin with Christopher Walken’s voice. Again very funny. His “you might be in Fresno” bit got things rolling; “if you can see a DUI check point from another DUI check point, you might be in Fresno.”

The third act was an improve group made up of three twenty-somethings. Like Whose Line is it Anyway but local.

The Pièce de résistance, if you’ll pardon and recognize my French, was Sunday when we went and saw an act called The Sparrow and the Mouse. It was a one woman act where the performer, Melanie Gall, told stories about Edith Piaf and her best friend and half-sister Simone. But most importantly she sang, mostly in French, Piaf’s most famous songs. Her voice was beautiful and even though I probably recognize a total of 10 words in French, (omlette de fromage) in the dark and tiny club I could feel my eyes tearing up during certain songs. Must be the French blood.

So Fresno has some culture because we have history, we can laugh at ourselves, and we can recognize and appreciate true beauty even in a language we don’t understand.