Showers Fail to Dampen Spirits at Arts Festival

To the more than 50,000 people who crowded Balboa Park for the opening of the San Diego Arts Festival, Super Powers Sunday will be remembered as the day it rained--briefly--on Mayor Maureen O’Connor’s parade.

It may also go down in history as the day O’Connor defied the elements.

At the noon-time kickoff, as a procession of children joined O’Connor on stage at the Spreckels Organ Pavilion, sprinkles turned to drizzle, and then to rain. Seeing some of her standing-room-only crowd heading for the exits, O’Connor sprang into action.

“Please,” she asked the crowd, as dozens of Soviet Georgian Child Folk Dancers stood fidgeting behind her. “I told these dancers to come over in October because it would be sunny. I don’t care if it’s raining, it’s shining on San Diego.”

And with that, the audience sat down, the rain stopped falling, and San Diego’s image-makers breathed a sigh of relief. For San Diego, the 21-day, $6-million festival has come to be seen as a test of the city’s ability to host an international cultural event. For O’Connor, who came up with the festival idea two years ago, it is a measure of her administration, her tenacity and her judgement. If successful, it could be her legacy. If a flop, it could be a major political embarrassment.

Judging from the rain-or-shine crowd’s enthusiastic applause, however, the child dancers were worth getting wet for. Dressed in red, black and gold, the young men leaped, spun in the air and landed on their knees, nimbly flinging gleaming sabers. Members of a 65-member dance troupe of adults and children, their performances throughout the rest of the festival have been sold out for weeks.

“You think this is where break-dancing came from?” asked Pam King, a first-grade teacher from Leucadia, who was in the audience. “I guess break-dancing is our folk dancing.”

Sandy Meador, a fifth-grade teacher from Carlsbad, agreed, but seemed alarmed by the dancers’ knee-numbing gymnastics. “Doesn’t it make you wonder about their growing bones?” she asked.

The folk dancers were among dozens of events and exhibits that seemed designed to point out how much Americans and Soviets have in common. Near the pavilion, seven sand carvers were at work on a familiar sight: a huge sand castle. It was modeled, said a spokesman for Sand Sculptors International, on St. Basil’s Cathedral in Moscow’s Red Square. Local puppeteer Marie Hitchcock’s show featured a meeting between four Faberge eggs and Humpty Dumpty. San Diego street performers among Soviet exhibits--offering their services for free. And then there were the beans.

For $2 a taste, thousands of people sampled a feast prepared by six master chefs from the Soviet republic of Georgia. Among the dishes: lobio, a bean and herb spread that looked like it ought to be sitting next to a taco.

“I’m a frijole fan, so I’m in heaven,” said Beto Yznaga, a computer science manager from Spring Valley, as he finished off some lamb shish kebab, or shashlyk.

Dorothy Johnson, a retired bank employee from Rancho Penasquitos, held an empty plate in her hand. “I had the marinated beef and the beans,” she said with a satisfied grin. “It looked like regurgitated dog food, and I thought, ‘I’ll taste these and put the rest in the garbage.’ But look at my plate!”

She was not alone. By 2:30 p.m., the Georgian chefs were running out of food. “The city said 50,000 would come, so we should cook for 20,000,” said Jack Monaco, who presided over the Georgian food operation. “But it’s been less than four hours, and almost everybody is out of food.”

Luckily, even before the Georgian food ran, more than a few visitors had opted to wait in long lines for American fare, like Vienna beef hot dogs and hamburgers. By mid-afternoon, even Shalva Metreueli, one of the Georgian chefs, said he was hungry for a nice American sandwich.

As Mayor O’Connor told the adult Georgian dancers after their afternoon performance, “We have the same things--good people, good food and fantastic cities. The only difference is, you don’t have a woman mayor.”

The food was not the only sell-out. T-shirts and sweat shirts sold quickly at $12 and $21 a pop. And at about 2 p.m., visitors waiting to buy $5 tickets to see the Faberge egg collection were told that no more tickets were available for Sunday viewing. Last week, museum officials stopped selling advance tickets for the first day, but held back about 1,000 tickets for sale on Sunday.

Those fortunate enough to see the 27 jeweled eggs had nothing but praise for the exhibit. The eggs, which Russian czars gave as Easter gifts to their mothers and wives, came primarily from the Forbes Magazine and Kremlin Armory Museum collections and will be on view until Jan. 7.

Rebecca Preston said she came from Houston along with a companion from Oklahoma just to see the Faberge exhibit.

“I started calling the (San Diego) Chamber of Commerce months ago to find out how to get tickets,” she said after spending 90 minutes with the eggs in the Museum of Art.

Not everyone who attended the festival shared Preston’s enthusiasm. About a dozen members of the Alliance for Self-Determination of Armenia traveled throughout the crowds protesting what their leaflet called “the facade of ‘perestroika. ‘ “ Dressed in black and white striped jail garb, they carried banners that said “Red Tyranny” and “Soviet Art: Yes/ Soviet Imperialism: No.” At the head of their procession was a man in a dark suit and a Mikhail Gorbachev mask.

Across the park in the Casa del Prado, Nana Alexandria, one of the strongest women chess players in the world, played chess for four hours with 38 people at once. Alexandria, an intense Soviet woman with dark hair and pale skin, spent only moments at each board, studying the moves and then moving on.

Tony Mendes, an 11-year-old sixth grader who has played chess for five years, started off well, he thought. “At first, I started mimicking her and she got confused. At the next move I almost got a checkmate,” he said as he waited for Alexandria to make her rounds. But in one more exchange, he was out.

Jack Miller, the president of the San Diego Chess Club, predicted that Mendes would not be the only loser. “Nana will probably play 100 games today, and she doesn’t intend to lose any,” he said.

Throughout the afternoon, dozens of people approached the mayor to shake her hand or pose for photos, while still more yelled things like, “It’s a great party, Maureen!” or, “Thanks for bringing this to us, mayor!”

“Tell that to the City Council--they’re the ones that had the doubts,” O’Connor replied.

There were other converts. Johnson said that in addition to the tasty food, the whole day had made her “a believer. When I read about this I thought, ‘My, God. We need sewers. We need roads. What is (Mayor O’Connor) doing?’ I really have to eat crow. This was a marvelous idea.”

To Lori Kanter and Richard Lindbergh, who made reservations in March to get married in the park on Sunday, the festival was a distraction.

“It’s hard to concentrate,” Kanter admitted, as she stood in her white gown outside Cafe del Rey Moro. “We have 70 guests, but it seems there are another umpteen uninvited ones.”

“Someone asked me if I’m a Russian dancer,” said Jan Steck, a bridesmaid in a pink ruffled dress. “I’m from Tulsa.”

Times staff writers Barry Horstman and Oscar Garza contributed to this story.