Soaking Up the Local Color

Men wearing kilts and bonnets browsed through exhibits of Persian rugs and inlaid water pipes. Nearby, an Indian woman dressed in a sari stopped to jump rope with some girls.

Further down, still-wet surfers pondered the ancient martial art of kendo performed by Korean masters, while a Korean family wondered at the splendor and colors of an Indian wedding.

Everywhere at Saturday’s Kaleidoscope Multicultural Festival at Huntington Beach’s Pier Plaza, cultures meshed and melded.

Kaleidoscope was first held in 1989 to help mark Orange County’s 100th anniversary. Its sponsor, the Multicultural Arts Council of Orange County, also put on festivals in 1991 and 1993. The festival continues today from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m.

“We need to do this more and more,” said Christopher G. Lamberton of Clans of the Highlands of Orange County, a Scottish cultural group.

“Ten or 20 years ago, something like this never would have happened here,” he said. “But I think America only now is awakening to its cultural diversity.”

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Meanwhile, an afternoon kendo demonstration drew a crowd fascinated by the ritualized sword fights.

“Oy vay! Look at that!” exclaimed one onlooker as swords gleamed in the sunlight.

“Now that’s what you need at work for your boss!” a woman said to a friend.

And from one surfer to another: “Dude! Think those are real?”

At the Japanese exhibit, teachers gave origami lessons to anyone who asked.

After several minutes and dozens of painstaking folds, Chris Blehm, 25, of Colorado was rewarded with a paper lily.

“That was so great, and she was so patient with me,” Blehm said, referring to his teacher.

Each exhibit helps to bring cultures together, and that’s progress, said Pat Markley, a board member of the Multicultural Council.

“Take something like this, when you have the mainstream public--families with all the children--that’s how it starts,” Markley said.

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But some people who attended the festival said they were skeptical that the event alone would bring racial and ethnic tolerance. “It’s easy to be moral and philosophical when you’re sitting at home, but people are pretty myopic,” Blehm said. “They say one thing but then they don’t really live it.”

Designer Mark Cripe attended the event in part for professional reasons, but he also wanted to teach his 5-year-old daughter Melissa about various cultures.

Cripe, 35, works for an Irvine company that designs souvenir pins for the Olympics. He is working on ideas for the 2002 Salt Lake City games and searched for inspiration roaming from tent to tent.

“I need to get a little bit of an idea of the colors of and cultures of other countries,” Cripe said.

An African American exhibit drew a crowd who watched girls from Santa Ana and Compton perform double-dutch jump-roping and invited onlookers to try.

Cy Edwards, 53, a professor of sociology at Cypress College, took a try and even outlasted some of the girls, receiving the applause of the crowd.

“Whew, I haven’t done double dutch since I was back in Brooklyn,” Edwards said after his stint between the ropes.