On Saturday, Aug. 28, the Italian American Family Festa was held in downtown San Jose at Guadalupe Park.
With a large turn out of over one thousand people, there were enough meatballs to go around, along with music, crafts and delicious Italian-American treats.
The Italian Family Festa is an annual event which is put on by the Italian American Heritage Foundation, who hosts language classes, art shows, and film festivals at their Cultural Center in Santa Clara county, which is the oldest Italian-American cultural center on the West Coast.
The festival had all the classic food you would expect: pizza, lasagna, and fried artichokes. Some classic Italian street food was also at the festival, including zeppole, which is like an Italian version of a donut hole, covered in cinnamon sugar.
Many Italians and Italian-Americans were in attendance, and were showing their support for the future renovations about to take place in downtown San Jose to make “Little Italy” a larger, more lucrative area for business owners.
Some attendees represented the area in which their lineage came from, wearing pins that specified if they were Sicilian, Tuscan, or Venetian.
More attendees showed their Italian pride by wearing red, green and white beads, but some preferred to rely on their looks alone.
“My nose gives me away,” responded an elderly man when offered the tri-colored necklaces.
Catering to the many people interested in Italian culture were local merchants who had crafts, food and clothing for sale. The vendors were selling a variety of products, from hand-made dried pasta to “Proud to be Italian” T-shirts.
There was a stage where live performers sang hits from famous Italian-American singers like Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin, along with ballads from Italian opera singer Andrea Bocelli.
The day went on with a grape-stomping competition and a display of chefs tossing pizza dough.
The Festa was a great way to spend a weekend afternoon, and encompassed all of the important ideals of the Italian lifestyle: food, family and fun.