Los Angeles’ Lotus Festival Dragon Boat Races Next Weekend
The City of Los Angeles will be holding its 31st annual Lotus Festival beginning this Friday at Echo Park in Los Angeles and running through Sunday, with dragon boat races, music, dance and art celebrating the cultures of Asia and the Pacific Islands.
Many years ago, LARD participated in this dragon boat “race” and suffered its most embarrassing loss in its history. Granted, it was very early in LARD’s history but it was still rather embarrassing. I am sure if you asked any veterans about it, they would say they didn’t remember this race as most of us have erased it from our memories.
The dragon “boats” consisted of 2 canoes duct taped and tied together. The organizers provided large aluminum shafted paddles with concaved plastic paddles that had much more surface area than our regular paddles. For some reason, we opted to use our paddles instead and proceeded to get whipped around (yes, around – the course was not straight) the race course by people that have never paddled before. It was quite embarassing.
The coolest thing about this festival is that is right near my tattoo artist’s shop.
Unfortunately, because of LARD’s “hectic” race schedule this season we have decided not to participate this year. 
Click here for more details. For pictures of their “boats”, click here.
Hello! I wanted to let everyone know that at the Lotus Festival 2008 Health/Community Area, my friends and I are hosting a bone marrow registration drive to try to register minorities to be potential bone marrow donors. We are mainly trying to find my friend Michelle Maykin, http://www.projectmichelle.com, a match as she is currently battling leukemia and needs a match ASAP!
Please come and check us out. Learn about Michelle’s story and be the one to save her’s or one of 6,000 other leukemia patients’ lives!
Leang Ly (leangtly@yahoo.com)
good god. why did you have to bring this up.
that was one of the most painful “races” we have ever had the misfortune of participating in.
calling it a race is being a bit too disingenuous …
i remember getting off the boat and thinking, “Damn, this team sucks… ”
The fact that this is the first time I’ve heard about this little race points to how badly were people shamed. LOL