Cleveland Eats

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I mentioned this place in the North Coast Feis Eats review back in February, but we hit it again this weekend and it seemed even better.

253360_10151632564931131_1454533932_nIf you have the opportunity to go to Grumpy’s Cafe  you have to take advantage of it. We went again last Sunday before the Cleveland Feis, got there shortly after 8 and were seated immediately. Good coffee in mis-matched mugs like the type you would find in your cupboard at home, and a homey yet eclectic feel make this a great place for a pre-feis breakfast.

The servings are huge and I had the Jambalaya omelet (see the pic for some of the other omelet options) which was outrageous. They serve most everything with cajun potatoes so if you don’t like spicy, order a different side. The wife had french toast and the girl child had pumpkin pancakes and none of us needed lunch.

This is one of those rare local finds that are nice people making great food at reasonable prices, and if you get the chance, I highly recommend it.

What The Feis Feistaurant Rating = 10 – must visit!

Cleveland Feis

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gcfsLogoThe Cleveland Feis was held on May 26th, 2013 at the Wolstein Center at Cleveland State University in Cleveland, Ohio.

Venue – This is the first time I have attended the Cleveland Feis and the first feis I have attended at the Wolstein Center, and I thought it was just OK as feis a venue.

There were ten listed performance stages for the feis, but I only saw eight of them in the arena (3 – 10) so I am not sure where stages 1 and 2 were, and therefore cannot comment on those. I walked the entire upper area of the arena, and the awards and vendor area, so 1 & 2 must have been in a different section of the arena if they were set up.

Each stage in the arena was separated by large curtains hanging down from the arena catwalks. The curtains were on 3 sides of each stage (except the one on the end) and really seemed to constrict the area around the stage, making them seem really tight. They were so crowded in fact, that they had the musicians crammed into one corner and there was only room for one row of dancers at a time during a set.

Stage 3 was the ‘big’ stage that I saw at 24 x 24 feet and the size seemed adequate, but I did see a number of dancers slip on that stage. Not sure if there were any high or slick spots. The other stages I saw were small-ish at 16 x 20 feet and I saw at least one dancer go off the edge of the stage and finish her set on the side. I think the stage size was OK, but a little bigger would have been better for some of the more advanced dancers who ‘travel’ while dancing.

There was probably 10 – 15 feet (it seemed) between the judges table and the first row of seats where viewers could watch the dancing, and very little room for dancers to line up for their dances next to the stage, so dancers tended to congregate in the 10 – 15 feet behind the judge. This not only made viewing difficult for people in lower seats, but also made it hard to get from one place to another on the floor.

Feis results were posted on a big temporary wall at the far end of the arena, and the awards were on the same end of the arena, so all fairly convenient.

Parking was adequate with a parking garage less than a minute walk from the center. It was pay parking but the pay machines I found were out of order, plus, by the time we left, the gates were raised so I cannot comment on the cost.

A negative, arenas are not the best for older viewers and those with mobility issues, as well as parents with small children and strollers. I did not see any elevators to get from the upper area to where the results were (not saying there were none). I also saw A LOT of people trip on the steps in the arena. Step heights, even the cement steps were uneven and a bit hard to navigate. (Not the feises issue but a venue issue).

Venue Score: 6 

Judges – Daughter danced 4 times and had 2 different judges. With as many stages as they had, I would think they could have rotated more often.

Another thing I saw was one of the judges seemed to be very easily distracted by things going on around him. While the girls were dancing he would glance off to the sides and even behind him instead of watching what the dancers were doing. Others commented on this too.

Judge Score: 4

Music – Each stage had a musician or two, and as long as you were close to the stage, you could hear them fine. I asked my daughter if she had any issues hearing them and she said no. If you were higher in the arena, there was a lot of ‘musical confusion’ and it was hard to tell one musician from the other. The musician at stage 3 seemed really loud.

On stage 10 I understand there was some tempo issues and the musician was playing to fast for some of the dances.

Musician Score: 7

Food – Convention center food at stupid prices. It cost me $10 to get 2 pretzels and a bottle of water. Other food choices were pizza, hot dogs and nachos, if you could get those, since when lunch hit, the concession stands started running out of food. The one I was at had no pizza, only a few pretzels and from what I could tell, not enough hot dogs to feed the number of people in line. Small sodas were $3 and large were $5  just to show how stupid some of the other prices were.

A man I asked said the pizza he had wasn’t the worst he ever ate, for what that is worth. The pretzel my wife had was greasy and she could not eat it.

They also had a no outside food rule. Sorry, if you are going to have no outside food, you need to have:

  • healthy options
  • reasonably priced options
  • enough to feed everybody
  • enough variety to handle dietary restrictions (we have nut and gluten issues in our house)

Food Score: 1

Vendors – George the shoe guy, and the other shoe guy, the feis tshirts, some glittery stuff and a nice jewelry table, but no ‘fun’ Irish stuff.

Vendor Score: 5

Results – And it goes downhill from here…

The first result we waited for was not posted for nearly 2.5 hours. When I asked about it, the lady researched and found that it had been filed without being written on the wall. She did admit that it had still taken almost 2 hours to get to them. The results for the rest of the dances all hovered around the 1 hour mark.

Another issue is that they only had two people handling results and there seemed to be confusion posting, as I saw a number of results posted in the wrong comp numbers. Someone had complained to me about that before I even went to the results area and I thought it might have been a fluke, but while I was standing there, I pointed out to the poster that they had just put 412 results in the 512 comp blocks. There was a lot of comps and I think those people could have used some help to spread out the responsibility.

Results Score: 3

Feis Flow – Just OK. My daughter danced 4 dances and from start to finish (including waiting for results) she was done in about 4 hours. They only had three different age comps on the stage but  they seemed to rotate a little slowly. I think the fact they could only put around 10 girls on stage at any one time, and some of the comps had over 25 dancers contributed to this.

I thought the awards table needed more help too. We were standing in line and the people behind the table would be moving stations, restocking awards etc… and we had to wait a bit to pick up an award. It seemed a bit unorganized and there were not set roles for the people working that area. It was a bit chaotic.

Feis Flow Score: 5

Scoring

Been thinking about it and I probably need to separate the ‘feis’ score from the overall score since the feis people do not control (necessarily) the venue, food, or vendors. Scoring will now have 2 parts, the feis score consisting of Judges, Music, Results and Flow and then the overall WTF rating.

Feis Score – 4.75

And the WTF Rating – a 4.42. Sorry, a number of negatives hurt this feis overall.

What did you think?

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Dancer Nicknames

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I have a feis-free weekend so I decided to write that blog post I have had on the back-burner.

When my daughter started competing, she danced against the same people over and over again, and we began to recognize the girls (and an occasional boy) from feis to feis and year to year, but had no idea what their names were. We started to ‘label’ the other dancers so we could identify them. None of them mean spirited, although I guess some may sound that way if you didn’t know the story behind them, they were just a way for us to be able to talk about things like ”nickname has really nice kicks” or “nickname got a new dress” or whatever, until we eventually learned the dancers real names.

I have been wondering about this topic for a while, thinking that we (my daughter and I) could not be the only ones that had nicknames for other dancers, and when another dance Mom recently told me one of the nicknames her and her daughter had, I figured I would just write this and see if this was common, or if the dance Mom and I were the only ones.

And what, you may ask were the nicknames and how did they come to be? Well…

Amazon – Early on, the girl child would dance against this extremely tall girl, literally a foot or more taller than the other girls and she gained the nickname ‘Amazon’ from the tall female warriors of Greek mythology. We have since met her and her parents and she is one of the nicest young ladies, so she has lost the moniker, but that is where it started for us.

Grumpy – there was this one girl who would NEVER smile on stage, but danced extremely well, besting the competition in most every event. It was almost like she danced because she was forced to, and she kept an Eeyore attitude throughout the competition. The fact she did so well but did not seem to enjoy any of it got her the nickname Grumpy.

Rachel from Akron – I know, not much of a nickname but Rachel isn’t from Akron. That is where we first met her and her family, so in a way, its a nickname.

Rootbeer – the dancers initials were AW so that one just kind of created itself.

Rachel from Michigan – I know, another one that is not so creative, but since we already had Rachel from Akron, we needed a way to tell them apart. Rachel from MI is indeed from MI.

Disco Ball – this is not so much about the dancer as it is her dress, which has SO many sequins, well, you get the idea.

So what about you? Any nicknames or stories you would like to share? Take our poll or add comments below.

NOTE: Please do not use dancers real names and note that all comments will be moderated. Thanks

Ashley Smith – Heartbeat of Home Update!

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Ashley was chosen as one of the 10 Judges Choice winners for the Heartbeat Of Home competition. She will compete against the 9 other JC winners and the 10 Peoples Vote winners in on the 24th of May in Dublin, Ireland for the formal audition for Heartbeat of Home which opens in Dublin in September.

We wish Ashley the best of luck in the auditions!

Bluegrass Feis

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The 2nd Annual Bluegrass Feis was held on May 12th, 2013 at the Lexington Convention Center in Lexington, KY.

Read this whole review, starts a little negative but has its great points and finishes very strong!

Please add your feis rating for the Bluegrass Feis at the bottom of this review!

NOTE: If you are going to do two feisanna and write reviews in one weekend, take notes. Surprising how fast things overlap in the brain 🙂

Venue – This is the first feis I have attended at the Lexington Convention Center, and I liked the space for feis venue, but…There were seven performance stages in one large room but I do not think the space was used well for stage setup.

NOTE: We were in and out of this feis pretty quickly so I really only saw the OC/PC stage and the stage my daughter danced on. Comments about other stages appreciated.

Stage 7 was set up for OC and PC and it was big, but that is where good stage size stopped (remember my note above).

We were on Stage 5 which was literally attached to Stage 6 with only a strip of tape separating them. I saw dancers crossing over the tape while dancing, so if that is any indication, the stages were too small. Mix the stage size with some big comps and things were crowded.

Camping was adequate and as far as I could tell, people honored the No Camping signs. People did do that ‘camp in the viewing seats and right behind the seats for the stages’ thing, which made viewing more difficult. Seating at the stages for viewers was not to bad in spite of that, but if all the comps were big it would have been tight.

Feis results were posted on a big wall at the far end of the hall, kind of in one corner, and the awards were on the same end of the hall at the other corner, so fairly convenient.

Parking was adequate and FREE, but was a bit of a walk from the dance area. There was an option to drive up to drop off however.

Venue Score: 6 – Sorry, the stage setup was an issue in my opinion. (see note above)

Judges – Daughter danced 3 times and had 2 different judges. Would prefer a different judge for each dance, and I actually saw judges from the Queen City Feis sitting in the viewing area, so they were available for rotation, but I of course don’t have all the info. Rating is based on what could have been based on my observation.

Judge Score: 6

Music – Remembering I only saw our stage and the Champ stage. There was only one musician for stages 5 and 6, sitting behind the stage were the two stages were joined. There were times when one stage was waiting for the other to finish dancing before they could continue because of the musician issue.

Musician Score: 5

Food – I cannot rate food because I only saw one stand off to the side of the hall, and did not look for others. We did not eat there. Food score not included in this review.

Food Score: NA

Vendors – George the shoe guy, the feis tshirts, and a few small tables. Extremely limited. I like to shop for Irish stuff so this was disappointing.

Vendor Score: 5

Results – Here is were things start sounding a lot less negative 🙂  Great job here! Results were out quickly, and were in the 15-25 minute range. A friend tweeted me that FeisWorx was posting results real time, but the hard copy made it to the wall very quickly.

Results Score: 10

Feis Flow – Excellent! My daughter danced 3 dances (skipping the TJ again) and from start to finish (including waiting for results) she was done in about 2 hours. They had six different age comps on the stage and they rotated very quickly, but five of the six comps had only 5 – 10 dancers, one comp had over 20 dancers.

Something else that impressed me was the awards table. Each person at the table had a laptop and when the dancer walked up, they looked up the dancers number and had all the results for the dancer. No searching through folders, no hard copies, no initialing papers, etc… Very cool, first time I have seen that (I think).

Combine that with the quick results and good venue(potential to be better), I would say I was very pleased with the flow of the Bluegrass Feis.

Feis Flow Score: 10

And the WTF Rating – a 7.0. For only the second feis, I thought Bluegrass did a great job and the score was brought down by some things they could probably change fairly easily (I have never run a feis, so that is my opinion). I thought they did some things REALLY well and I highly recommended this feis. Looking forward to seeing it develop in the future.

What did you think?

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Queen City Feis

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queencityThe 10th Annual Queen City Feis was held Saturday, May 11th, 2013 at the Duke Energy Convention Center in Cincinnati, OH.

Venue – This is the third or fourth feis I have attended at the Duke energy Center, and I like it as a feis venue. There were seven performance stages in one large room and like Buckeye, the stages were spaced out well, but not so far apart that getting back and forth between stages was difficult. Stages 6 and 7 were for OC and PC and were really big. They were in the same room, but sectioned off by a partition. The other 5 stages seemed a bit bigger than what I am use to seeing, and if I figured right, 24 x 24 feet, at least the stage we were on was.

Camping was very adequate but it still amazes me that people cram into smaller areas and camp in the walkways to be near their stage when there is so much room available.

Seating at the stages for viewers was good.

Feis results were posted on a big wall on one end of the room and awards were right next to results lists, all very convenient.

Parking was sufficient in parking garages within a block of the hall, but a bit pricey at $10. Seemed higher than I remember from previous feiseanna, but there was a big pet expo at the Duke Energy Center too, so maybe they jacked it up a bit.

Venue Score: 8.5 

Judges –Judge rotation was really good, my daughter danced three competitive dances and was judged by three different judges. She also did the Treble Reel and was judged by one of the three, but I don’t really count that as a repeat.

Judge Score: 10

Music – Considering how far apart the stages were, each stage had to have its own musician. No music bleed over and I did not see any major stoppages because of music issues.

Musician Score: 10

Food – Big venue concession stand, pretzels, chips, sandwiches, soda etc…, a little variety with paninis, cubans and some others. There some food carts for lemonade, shaved ice and smoothies. There was a coffee counter out in the ‘lobby’ that served Stabucks but was not a Starbucks.

For the food, I thought the prices were really high however. A salad was $8 or higher as were many of the sandwich options. A hot dog, $4, Gatorade $3.50, sodas over $2 and beer over $6. Trying to eat healthy was a bit cost prohibitive. Not impressed.

Food quality was not bad for what we did get however.

Food Score: 4

Vendors – George the shoe guy, a feis tshirt guy, and the ‘wig & stuff’ table, some jewelry, Irish nic nacs, the photographer, etc. There was a nuts and chocolate table that had some good stuff that was not too expensive.

See the complete vendor list.

Vendor Score: 8

Results – Very good, very fast… 15 minutes-ish for the results to hit the wall, maybe a little bit longer, but anything under 30 is not bad compared to some feisanna I have been too. This was particularly good.

I did not notice if there was any electronic posting as the paper copies were out so quick.

Results Score: 9

Feis Flow – Not too bad. My daughter had 3 competitive dances, skipping the TJ, and from start to finish (including waiting for results), she was done in about 6 hours, but there was a lunch break in there. They had six different age comps on the stage, and the comps were big, with most being spit into 2 groups each which slowed things down.

Combine that with the quick results and good venue, I would say the flow of the Queen City Feis was pretty darn good.

Feis Flow Score: 7.5 – a little slow.

And the WTF Rating, – a 8.14. Good judge rotation, good musician score really helped, bit I highly recommended this feis.

What did you think?

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