AUTHOR’S NOTE: You can also read the 2012 Review at https://ohiofestivals.net/1-brite-winter-festival-revisited-cleveland-february-18-2012/
The 2016 Review is at https://ohiofestivals.net/brite-winter-2016/
This post documents my experience on February 19, 2011.
********************
As the sun began to slowly roll down into the freshly refrozen horizon…
…I rolled down Cleveland’s Columbus Road…
…where, on the other side of the river…
…a festival was taking place…
…a Brite Winter Festival, in fact.
Created by former Case Western Reserve graduate students Emily Hornack and Jimmy Harris, the Brite Winter Festival was definitely one winter festival I was looking forward to. It had a really short run time (5-10 pm), but its offerings of Snow Mini Golf, Ski Bike Racing, and Snow Skee-ball made it seem like it could be the best winter festival ever.
Of course, as luck would have it, all the snow melted the week before during some strange February 50+ temperatures…
…and I feared the worst.
But the festival event coordinators, sensing my anxieties, called out, “Fear not!
“We will turn Snow Mini Golf into ‘Mini Golf’…
“…and Snow Skee-ball will become ‘non-snow Skee-ball’…”
“…and we’ll just take off the skis on those bikes…”
“…since there’s no powdery snow to protect you from the pavement.”
And my heart filled with happiness as I checked out all these things and more, including…
…the bands…
…cubes to take shelter in (a volunteer gave me the feeling it was for the bands to escape the cold)…
…a cool crane game…
…and plenty of fires to either warm up in the bitter cold or make s’mores…
…which were available for a buck.
I was more interested in dinner, though, in the form of…
…food trucks.
Since I haven’t yet been able to take advantage of all the food trucks in Columbus, and since food trucks are fairly new to Cleveland, this opportunity was a special one to me.
I decided on some steamed dumplings at one…
…but I was still hungry afterward.
I heard great things about the buffalo mac & cheese at the other truck…
…but I got a roasted red pepper bisque that tasted a little too much like tomatoes.
In the end, what stood out were the Brite Winter Festival cookies from Gypsy Beans & Bakery…
…and it wasn’t because of the colors.
These sugar cookie sandwiches, covered in colorful sweetness, were filled with a decadent chocolate that my niece and nephew thoroughly enjoyed when I brought them back to share (I enjoyed them as well).
Since I needed to bring the cookies before their bedtime, I couldn’t stay into the later hours to check out the light decor…
…although it did begin to show before I left.I started walking back to my car…
…and a bus from Case Western Reserve pulled up and unloaded some students…
…who showed up just in time to see the festival really glow.