Might be time to call it a festival: 2015 Pitch and Pick
Labor Day weekend is often a real beaut here in the PNW, and for the last few years Gabe and Dave have taken full advantage by having their birthday celebrations that weekend in Woodland Park, a lovely bit of acreage adjacent to the always popular Green Lake in north Seattle. Woodland Park contains a number of covered picknicking facilities, and a couple of remnants from the civic and community minded past: a lawn bowling green and a huge lane of covered horseshoe pits. The party format takes full advantage of these assets: the Pitch and Pick is a potluck picknicking, horseshoe pitching, old time music picking extravaganza that has grown steadily year over year. It might in fact be time to call it a festival -- I think for those that stumble into it by accident it certainly looks and sounds like one.
With lots of food to share, some lighthearted competition in the horseshoe pits, and circles of musicians scattered around the park in the dappled sunlight, the Pitch and Pick is a long, lazy, entirely enjoyable afternoon in one of Seattle's premier public spaces. As an event it has a lot of real things going for it, which may help explain its success: a little forest bathing, some face time with community, shared meals, participatory music, and games of aim (which I think play into our hunter/gatherer instincts). That's a recipe for an entirely satisfying party if I ever saw one.
