Every year in Philadelphia, people try to climb a 10-metre pole greased with lard in order to snag prizes suspended at the top, including fine Italian meats and cheeses.
This year’s game was so successful that after the South 9th Street Italian Market Festival wrapped up, only some provolone and spicy salami remained.
But much to the dismay of local business owners, the perishable prizes stayed there — dangling over the market for all to see — for another month.
“This is crazy, but in taking down the festival and all the clean-up and everything that we do to put everything back to normal, we just literally forgot about the grease pole,” Michele Gambino, the festival’s organizer, told As It Happens host Nil Köksal.
“I take full responsibility for that.”
‘World’s worst wind chime’
Philadelphia’s annual grease pole game is one of several similar events that take place all over the world, and a key draw of the Italian Market Festival.
The organizers hang various items from local vendors, including tasty treats, and price tags for the prizes that aren’t so hangable. Then teams of people work together, hoisting each other to the top to claim the spoils.
“I get so excited when people grab prizes,” Gambino said. “I think it’s the best.”
But some of this year’s spoils, well, spoiled. But Gambino says it never reached the point of smelling.
Nevertheless, the good people of the market didn’t much care for the view.
“Every time I saw somebody, they were like, ‘You know, you forgot to take down the prizes,'” Gambino said. “And I’m like, ‘Yes, thank you, I know.’ Everybody is so helpful.”
By the time they’d realized their mistake, Gambino says, they no longer had access to the lift they’d rented to grease the pole and hang the prizes in the first place.
“I had to rent a new lift to come, and we had to get somebody to go up and do it, and so it took like a month for it to happen.”
On Thursday morning, a man in a crane arrived at last.
The job of actually cutting the rotting meat and melting cheese fell to cheesemonger Tommy Amorim, who donated the provolone in question.
“The ball has been passed long enough, and here I am holding it,” he said as he climbed the lift, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer, which was on hand to witness the early-morning scene unfold.
“Finally,” a local pizza shop owner said with a sigh.
In an earlier story, the newspaper had dubbed the leftover prizes “the world’s worst wind chime.”
The pole was returned to its usual, ungreased and unassuming state, its regular street signs re-attached.
Gambino says she’s glad the deed is done, but there were some upsides to the whole debacle.
“What was kind of cool was that, like, people — all the tourists and visitors that come — knew that it was the grease pole because the prizes were still hanging. And when it goes back to normal, nobody knows it’s the grease pole. And a lot of visitors are like, ‘Can you tell us where the grease pole is?'” she said.
“And then when we show them where the grease pole was, it was kind of, like, uneventful. Because it’s just like a normal pole.”
Nevertheless, Gambino insists it won’t happen again next year.
“I’m going to appoint someone on the team and I’m going to be like, ‘It is your job before 9 p.m. on Sunday to get up there and take down everything,'” she said.
Source Agencies
