Traditional festival highlights art, music

Pecan Street Festival, one of Austin's most traditional festivals took place on Sept. 25 and 26, bringing a wide array of activities for all to enjoy. There were vendors, food carts, artists, shopkeepers, magic shows, and much more. Not even a very disappointing loss from the Longhorns football team was able to deter the electric vibe that surrounded the festival.

The annual Pecan Street tradition has been held since 1978 as a way to honor the original name of 6th Street and has seen different generations of Austin's culture.

Edwin Waller first named the streets by the names of the trees.

Often mistaken as one of the smaller Austin festivals, this festival is anything but, as according to KXAN, over 300,000 people were estimated to attend the fall version of this festival.

Art has and remains one of festival's main attractions. Artists demonstrated a wide array of art mediums such as photography, paintings, and metal work.

"I always enjoy coming and demonstrating my art here," said local artist Juan Espinoza. "This is a great festival for new and unique artists to come and show their work. I've been showing my work here for three years now and every year it gets bigger and better."

Walking the infamous 6th Street can build quite the appetite.

There were plenty of food vendors to take care of that appetite. For those health-conscious folks, the options were very limited, but for those who were less preoccupied with their health, the choiced included such things as turkey legs the size of your head, sausage links that looked like meat necklaces, blossoming onion rings, and even alligator.

"Many people shy away from alligator, but I have to tell them it tastes just like chicken or, in my opinion, even better," said food vendor Stanley Harrison.

Of course, no Austin festival could be complete without music. Bands took the stage throughout the day playing a variety of sounds. The Majestic Revelation Reggae provided funky, soulful and danceable reggae music complete with the lead singer wearing unique attire including a king's crown. This certainly supplied the "weird" Austin is so famous for.

The music highlight of Pecan Street Festival was Austin's own Grupo Fantasma. It seemed that everyone who attended on Saturday flocked to the main stage to catch Austin's Latin music's heavyweights. As usual, the 10-piece Latin fusion band didn't disappoint. The band played an electrifying blend of Latin, funk, and jazz. The end result was an all-out 6th Street dance party. After the set, the audience asked for more and were rewarded with a 10 minute encore.

"That's the best Latin band I have seen," festival-goer Don Johnson said.

Pecan Street Festival remains a beloved part of Austin culture and has no signs of slowing down anytime soon. 

Editor's note: The Pecan Street Festival officially changed name to The Capital One Bank Pecan Street Festival in the fall of 2008.