AIB street performance world championship 2009

It's not that often that you can say you wandered into town and you saw a man making a ham, pickle and cheese sandwich for the Lord Mayor.  That's what happened in Fitzgeralds Park on Saturday June 13th.  Part of the midsummer festival, and the 2009 street performance world championship.

I was wondering Fitzgerald Park on my way to an urgent appointment with a fortune teller when I heard the load crack of a whip. I thought to my self there is no way the fortune teller would have predicted that. Who was it but a Canadian gentleman Rob Williams who can light a steim with a bullwhip and make a baloney sandwich with his feet. I though this is a man who would earn a free days drinking in the most pubs in Castlebar without too much effort.

This is one of the strangest sights that I've ever witnessed, its a heowage 30ft long inflatable pig, that grunts and snorts and snores. Her eyes roll about and every so often her nose will twitch as if she is going to cover her neighbours in a storm of green thunder. How do I know it was a bannadh pig. Well you'll have to scroll down to see.

Rob Williams is a multi talented entertainer.

The famous shakey bridge, the entrance to the garden of eden for Corks north side residents. It's not wide enough for a honda civic but I'm sure there are one or two gentlemen who have tested to see if that's true.

Now you have often heard the term a clown above all clowns well this fella takes the biscuit, 1st off where is he going with an umbrella that size, and think it was the driest day of the year. The fish in the Lee were even gaspin for a breath.

Dr Williams made this sandwich with nothing but his toes. The strange thing is he washed his feet with an anti bacterial foam before hand (pardon the pun) which in theory meant the lord mayor of Cork Brian Bermingham was already onto a winner. I've had the pleasure of eating in a restaurant in Mayo where I witnessed a waitress cleaning up a pool of dog urine with the same cloth that she had was using to polish my table with. So. I'd eat a sandwich off this man's plate a thousand times faster than I’d go for a cold cut panini in the aforementioned hostelry.

I rang the fortune teller, said I don't want to know my future because I've just seen a man preparing food with his feet and now I'm looking at men women and children suckling from a 30 ft inflatable pig. All that was missing was the mad hatters tea party and a rabbit running around with a public enemy watch roaring he's late.

Fair play, the Lord Mayor put his sandwich where his mouth is.

No wonder the pig was claimed between the feeding the heat and the other mad men going around the park I felt like a lie down myself...

This years world street performance competition was in Cork on the 13th and 14th of June last and its in Dublin at the moment until Sunday June 21st in Merrion square.  Unfortunately I only got to see one act, but there was lots more that I wish I had seen. 

Some video from Cork.

and the official web site for more.