Latest news with #St.Peter'sFiesta
Boston Globe
21 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
At St. Peter's Fiesta in Gloucester, greasy pole competitors brave fog for a chance at glory
Contestant after contestant ran across the pole — which is greased with lard, fish guts, and oil among other slippery substances. One by one, they all fell, failing their mission to capture a flag planted at the end. That is, until the Advertisement Sunday marked the fifth and final day of St. Peter's Fiesta, a festival honoring Cape Ann's Italian-American fishing heritage. For nearly 100 years, locals and tourists have flooded Gloucester's streets in celebration of the Feast of St. Peter, the patron saint of fisherman, shipbuilders, and sailors. Each evening, revelers gathered for live performances of Italian love songs and covers of Rat Pack crooners. Advertisement Down toward Gloucester's waterfront, street vendors sold treats and children lined up for carnival rides. On Sunday morning, the festivities began with an open-air mass at the flower-strewn altar in St. Peter's Square, followed by a procession. At 3 p.m., spectators gathered for the Blessing of the Fleet, as Catholic clergy offered prayers for the fishing boats bobbing in the harbor. For Gloucester's fishing community, long a Throughout the weekend, crews of 10 rowers, a helmsman, and a coxswain competed in seine boat races, rowing out a half-mile from Pavilion Beach and racing to be the first back to shore. On Sunday, three racing boats — the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria — set off into the fog and returned minutes later, the calls of their coxswains swallowed by the chatter of beach crowds and the low growl of breakers hitting the shoreline. But it was the greasy pole competition, with its odd mystique and can't-look-away sense of danger, that drew the most reaction from the crowd. It is a tradition that creates local Shortly before 5 p.m., a fog bank rolled in from the east, leaving spectators straining to see the pole as it faded in and out of the mist. More than 100 boats floated off of the beach, from inflatable craft with outboard motors, to fishing boats waving American and Italian flags, to kayaks to yachts. As the competition started, the crowd let out a great cheer, and boats let off blasts from their fog horns. Advertisement 'They could be jumping off right now, we wouldn't even know,' said Matthew Vallis, a retiree who lives in Gloucester watching from the beach. The competitors began their journeys, most of which ended in a quick fall. Some plummeted razor straight, others flailed their arms and scissor-kicked. One contestant wobbled out of control, but improbably made it nearly to the flag before falling, the crowd's growing cheer ending in a collective 'aww.' Another slipped and hit the pole hard, drawing a collective grimace of sympathy. Sandy Bartos, 32, was getting food with a friend and their tired, curly-hair dog Luca after spending the day in Rockport when they saw the crowd gathering. After hearing about the competition, they decided to come down to Pavilion Beach and check it out. 'We were told it was the greasy pole contest, and that's tough to beat,' she said. The festival was well-attended throughout the weekend. People of all ages crowded Stacy Avenue, eating ice cream and lobster rolls from food trucks. As the tide receded, kids splashed in the surf. And the harbor, Vallis said, was the most populated he'd ever seen it for the event: 'I've never seen this many boats.' Dan Glaun can be reached at
Sky News AU
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Sky News AU
Massachusetts holds annual Greasy Pole Contest
Contestants at the St. Peter's Fiesta in Gloucester, Massachusetts, have made their way to compete in the annual Greasy Pole Contest. Competitors attempt to walk across a slippery 13-meter telephone to grab the victory flag at the end, without falling into the water beneath them. The contest dates back nearly 100 years.
Boston Globe
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
A love letter to St. Peter's Fiesta
Write to us at . To subscribe, . TODAY'S STARTING POINT On Tuesday night, I was in the St. Peter's Club in Gloucester, when I heard it for the first time this year. 'Me chi samiou, dute mute!' a guy sitting at the bar suddenly shouted. 'Viva San Pietro!' everyone responded. 'Me chi samiou, dute mute!' he shouted even louder this time, since what he's asking translates to, 'What are we, mute?' Advertisement 'Viva San Pietro!' the bar shouted back. And just like that, I got that feeling of surprise again. The same feeling I get every year when St. Peter's Fiesta gets rolling, and I'm astonished to feel how deeply I've come to love this weird and wonderful and how-is-this-still-legal festival. I've been fortunate to cover many of the great annual events in New England, but St. Peter's Fiesta — which honors the patron saint of fishermen and will be at its peak this weekend — is easily my favorite. And I can assure you I did not see that coming when my family moved to Cape Ann 13 years ago. I knew of its signature event, the 'greasy pole' competition where lunatics risk tooth and rib attempting to walk across a Crisco-covered 40-foot-long telephone pole to grasp a flag that is said to hold eternal glory. Advertisement We live next door in Essex, and when my kids were little, we'd take them down to watch the greasy pole — which takes place on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday each year — then go to the carnival, eat ice cream, that sorta thing. It was festive. It was on the ocean. It was the last week of June. There was a lot to like, but we were just visitors. But it wasn't until 2017, when I embedded with the greasy pole walkers My buddy Sandy got me in with the pole walkers. He's a former champ. That means something in Gloucester, and he vouched for me with his cousin Vinny, who runs the pole on Fridays, when the young newcomers walk. And the first thing Vinny did on Friday was take all these young guys to Peter Frontiero's house — he's the winningest pole walker of all time, known by the nickname Peter Black — for a blessing of the feet. When a couple of the guys were acting up a little, Vinny laid right into them. 'This is Peter Black's house! Show some respect.' They shut right up. And I stood there, with my notebook, having one of those moments where life feels like a movie. This whole thing meant something. I knew that; but now I felt it, and continued to feel it as I spent all three days on the platform with the walkers. Watching from the beach, it's easy to think the whole thing is a bit gimmicky, almost cartoonish. But behind the scenes, it's necessarily real. Because that pole is legitimately dangerous. I stood inches away from each person as they were preparing to make their first steps, and I can assure you that every one of them was somewhere between scared and terrified. Advertisement Some people take a couple of steps and kinda jump off. But for those who really want it, who look down that pole at that flag 40 feet away and picture being carried up the beach after they grab it, mean something to you. And that made Fiesta mean something to me. I declined a chance to walk the pole. Not because I was terrified, but because it wouldn't be the greasy pole if they let some guy walk it just because he's a Globe reporter. That's a gimmick. The pole is for Gloucestermen ( But a couple of years ago, I accepted a chance to be part of the other great Fiesta competition, the one that is woefully underappreciated in the shadow of the made-for-TV mayhem of the pole: These are wooden boats that carry 10 rowers, a coach, and a skuller (who steers the boat). The race leaves from Pavilion Beach, right in front of the greasy pole platform, goes a half mile out into the harbor, around a buoy, and then back to the beach. Advertisement The races often come down to inches, and one year I had tears in my eyes when I watched a group of moms I know from the gym win the women's race by a nose. A group of moms won the women's seine boat race at St. Peter's Fiesta in Gloucester in 2017. Erika Wall My race did not go so well. We were all new rowers and you get only a few days to practice on the boats, so we got justifiably smoked in our preliminary race. The race took us about 12 minutes, and those were the most physically grueling 12 minutes of my life. The oars are like holding a telephone pole. The pace is essentially all-out. You will tear ab muscles you didn't even know you had. And you can't miss a stroke because the guys next to you are depending on you. That meant something to all of us. We were part of something. We were part of Fiesta. Though I'm not rowing this year, I continue to feel a deepening connection to this festival that feels very out-of-time. And so on Tuesday I went down to the St. Peter's Club with the guys from my boat, The Cut, drank $3 beers while we waited for them to draw the heats for this year, and when called upon, answered the chant asking if we were mute. Viva! Viva! Viva! Viva! Viva! Viva! 🧩 1 Across: 71° POINTS OF INTEREST Market Basket battle: After staying quiet for the past few weeks, the sole Market Basket board member who is loyal to sidelined chief executive Arthur T. Demoulas Advertisement Vaccine crackdown: Newton Public Schools will not allow Abuse horrors: A staggering number of Political ties: The mayor of Boston and the likely next speaker of the Massachusetts House have a long friendship Holyoke Public Schools: The district will be Mamdani attacked: Prominent MAGA-aligned commentators launched xenophobic attacks on Zohran Mamdani over the state lawmaker's Muslim religion after his apparent Democratic primary win in the New York City mayoral race. ( US representative plea: Democrat LaMonica McIver of New Jersey pleaded not guilty to charges she assaulted and interfered with immigration officers at a detention center during a congressional oversight visit with two other lawmakers. ( NATO mixed bag: In a win for Trump, European allies at the NATO summit agreed to increase their defense spending, but there was no meaningful assistance for Ukraine or discussion of threats from Russia and China. ( Kilmar Abrego Garcia: The man mistakenly deported to El Salvador and returned to the US to face federal charges will remain in custody until at least Friday. But then he's likely to go into ICE custody for deportation proceedings. ( Big bucks: Lionel Messi is the highest-paid player in Major League Soccer for the third straight year with total annual compensation of $20.4 million. That's more than the entire payroll of 21 teams. ( Advertisement BESIDE THE POINT By Teresa Hanafin 🧒 Mark of joy: Her family insisted on removing a 'bad-luck' mole on her face when she was young. But she'll never force her daughter 💍 Tacky: You are cordially invited to critique Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez's wedding invitation to their nuptials in Venice. It looks like they outsourced it to a kindergarten art class. ( 💦 Miss Conduct Classic: Their neighbors treat their backyard pool like community property. How can they end 🍹 Seasonal sips: What makes the perfect summer drink? Here are some cocktails and mocktails to keep you cool in the hot sun. ( 🇨🇦 O Canada: Last year, Kari Bodnarchuk gained Canadian citizenship through her ancestry (her father was born there). 🪈 Pipeline: Plumbers around the region rely on the deep knowledge of Jim Cain, an 80-year-old Thanks for reading Starting Point. This newsletter was edited by ❓ Have a question for the team? 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