A Parade of Quality
Jonathan Casey

I tend to be a little snobby about parades. It isn’t anything to brag about, but you sorta have to get a little snobby if you’re going to survive any given Mardi Gras. Well, everyone, not that you asked, but the True/False March March is not only the first good parade I’ve seen in Columbia, it’s genuinely good. I’m pretty sure I saw my childhood pediatrician dressed as a wizard and dancing next to a horse that had been tagged with a “T/F” in Sharpie. These are the sorts of things you look for in a quality parade, and equally jarring sights were coming at me faster than I could process. Columbia! I ran into an old friend on the way into Reality Bites—another bustling blur of good food and music—and it turned out this was his first Fest as well. “It feels like I’m in a completely different city,” he said before we were separated in the crowd, presumably to not see each other for another five years. Reports of this whole thing being overwhelming were not an exaggeration.