\nHome is an illusion<\/strong><\/p>\nThe Hayward site is in Southland Mall, a Legoland boxy, single-storied mall built in 1961. It’s a major shopping mall, with anchors Sears, Kohl’s, Macy’s and JC Penny. Most of its hallways are filled with jewelry, perfume and cell phone kiosks.<\/p>\n
Hayward’s motto is \u201cHeart of the Bay,\u201d and is considered a northern extension to Silicon Valley. It used to be a cannery town when Hunt Brothers Cannery packed peaches, apricots and tomatoes but it’s more traditionally suburban these days with crowds of ranch houses with dogwoods and fruit trees.<\/p>\n
Southland Mall is next to a middle-class residential area. From our trailers we see the back fences of the homes. I walk the area thinking of all the lives the people live with in these homes, of routine, work and family.<\/p>\n
All of them look like peace, to someone on the other side of those front windows.<\/p>\n
I see it too as I walk past warm homes and know their peace is every bit the illusion as my carnival. Not always anything, sometimes the peace is real, sometimes its imagined.<\/p>\n
According to the last census, Hayward is the second most diverse city in the state, with about 40 percent of its citizens claiming Hispanic or Latino heritage. The demographics made it busy on our two Sundays, which for some reason are immensely popular with Hispanic families.<\/p>\n
The All Pro Wrestling promotion and wrestling school is here and pro-wrestler\/actor Dwayne \u201cThe Rock\u201d Johnston hails from Hayward.<\/p>\n
I mention the pro wrestling link because the first carnival I joined was with Classic Carnival, owned by George D’Oliva, a former pro wrestler who once wrestled Hulk Hogan at the Cow Palace. He knew The Rock’s father.<\/p>\n
It was D’Oliva who first told me about the Hispanic nature of carnivals, from Hispanic Sundays to buses loaded with workers from Mexico.<\/p>\n
In the Broadway play, Brigadoon magically appears once every hundred years in the Scottish Highlands.<\/p>\n
On those Sundays, the Hayward parking lot became a village populated by Mexican carnies and Spanish-speaking customers, a carnival in a mythical Mexican Brigadoon.<\/p>\n
-30-
\nTomorrow<\/strong>: Brigadoon II, two more jumps, two more road homes<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Carnivals are like traveling Brigadoons, showing up once a year where there once had been open space \u2013 on grass, concrete or gravel. Whether it is selling illusion or distraction, the unreal arises with rhythmic lights, bright music and games for junk. Both East Oakland and Hayward sites are a few feet away from I-880 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4qqmC-34","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eyeslikecarnivals.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eyeslikecarnivals.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eyeslikecarnivals.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eyeslikecarnivals.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eyeslikecarnivals.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=190"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/eyeslikecarnivals.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1944,"href":"https:\/\/eyeslikecarnivals.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190\/revisions\/1944"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eyeslikecarnivals.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eyeslikecarnivals.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eyeslikecarnivals.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}