The Knights

The Knights 76, 2013

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This past weekend was the wrap-up of Virginia Beach’s annual Neptune Festival, an event created, depending on who you talk to, to either drum up some fall tourism business, or, as I’ve heard some say, so that “we” can take back our beach, “we” being local residents who feel snubbed by the summer tourists who pump a billion dollars or so a year into our city’s economy.

Whatever the case, the Neptune Festival can be fun. There are parties, sandcastle contests, a regatta and a parade. There’s an art show and 5K, 8K and children’s “crawl” races. There are funnel cakes and, for reasons I don’t understand, people who sell bathtub liners and house gutters. There are bands, seafood and beer.

This year’s parade featured something like a hundred floats and other attractions, including your usual fire trucks, school bands, Star Wars re-enactors group, Shriners in go karts, baton twirlers, cheerleading squads, dance schools, antique cars, horses, Special Olympians and stern looking young boys and girls from local high school ROTC troops, a great many of whom, I’m sorry to report, haven’t learned how to keep in step to the same rhythm yet.  

I took a lot of pictures. But to be honest, I didn’t really care to document the parade. Instead, I was more interested in looking for my “little moments,” patterns in light and dark and color. And wouldn’t you know that for all the color of the parade some of my favorite pictures from the day aren’t of the cheerleaders, brass bands and the like. They’re a small group of pictures of the robes and sashes of a group of Knights of Columbus. Go figure. 

The Knights 78, 2013

 

 The Knights 77, 2013