We went to the Lexington Ave Arts and Fun Festival yesterday. It’s the day once a year that the main hippie street shuts down to traffic and they just run wild. People in crazy costumes, local bands playing, local artists selling their wares, a juggling unicyclist in a purple plaid suit, one of those statue performers that come to life when you put a dollar into their bucket, a car you could paint all psychedelic and buy a raffle ticket to win, and about 20 kids playing xylophones while a guy in a giant weasel costume danced around. I half expected Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters to be walking around, handing out cups of electric kool-aid.

There were even a few people made up like zombies, staggering around like Frankenstein’s monster. There was a bride zombie and a hillbilly zombie and a few others. They didn’t seem to really be interacting with people, just zombie-ing up and down the street. The festival isn’t that big - just one street - and I wondered if they got tired of the zombie act after a few laps. Probably not, they seemed to be pretty serious about it. Here’s a link to a set of pictures taken by a fellow blogger at blogasheville.

We walked around and looked at the tie-dies and the costumes and came to a silent auction booth. It was early and they were just setting up - hadn’t finished writing the minimum bids on everything yet. But they had on a painting/photograph/digital art work that caught our attention - a group of sockmonkeys lounging in some kind of garden cafe. My wife thought it was great and wrote down a respectable bid. The auction had just started and wouldn’t be over for 6 or 7 hours - so the odds were against us getting that painting. But her brother and sister-in-law are about to have a baby and my wife thought it would look great on their nursery wall.

We walked around some more, went to Mela for their lunch buffet, then drove back home. Went grocery shopping for the week, did laundry, watched a Netflix movie. It was 6:45 in the evening when the phone rang. It was Karen P. from the LAAFF Festival, calling to tell us we’d won the sockmonkey painting. She said the auction had ended at 6 and no one else had bid higher so did we want to come down and pick it up? Absolutely, we said. We were kind of settled in for the night and didn’t really want to head back downtown - but we’d agreed to buy that painting when we bid on it. And it was worth it - very cool.

During the 20 minute ride back in, my wife tried to decide whether to wait til the baby shower or Christmas or a birthday to give it to her sister-in-law. And how would we have it framed. And how this kid would have the coolest nursery in town because of that weird little painting.

She stayed in the car while I went down to the silent auction booth to pick it up. But there was nothing there; it was empty, just a few people sitting behind the desk talking. I stood there for a while and they didn’t look up. Finally, I interrupted and asked where I could pick up the sockmonkey painting. They didn’t know anything about it. One of them asked if I wouldn’t mind coming back in 10 to 15 minutes. There was a person who’d just walked away who might know something. When I told her my wife was in the car waiting, she said maybe I should go to the store at 68 Lexington - that was where they were keeping the leftover auction items.

I went there and saw someone inside - but the door was locked. So I waited a while until a woman stepped out. Do you have the sockmonkey painting in there, I asked. She didn’t know what I was talking about. Were you involved with the silent auction, I asked. She told me no but that I should go to 58 Lexington. I walked up the street to that address, went inside and saw three young women sitting on the floor. Is this where the sock monkey painting is, I asked. No, the sockmonkey painting is long gone, one of them said. I know, I told her, we won it. We were at home and got a phone call to come pick it up. She said there were plenty of other things I could buy. I told her I was only interested in the sockmonkeys. I asked if one of them had called me - they said no. One of the women went in the back, looked around, then came back to say she didn’t see it. They were tired and just wanted to get back to sitting on the floor. They said that there were a lot of people making phone calls at the end - they’d had to get home but were just doing them a favor by making the calls. Well, they didn’t do us a favor, I told them.

I said no more, just have a good night, and walked out - but I was pissed. Why would Karen P. call to ask us to come pick up the painting if she planned to sell it right out from under us? Or maybe the painting was still around but nobody knew where and seemed to much care. This was a 40 minute round trip that had no purpose - just got our hopes up so I could wander around asking people about sockmonkeys and getting blank stares in return.

This is the kind of behavior I expect to see in developmentally disabled children or in politicians - but it still surprises me when I see it in people who consider themselves artists. Or in PETA activists. Or people who go to church every Sunday. Or those who do yoga and meditate. You would think that they would have a greater awareness of other people and some amount of consideration for them. But it seems that some of them just turn inward on themselves, walking through the world as asleep as cows, bumping into people and wondering why. Just like zombies.