“It was a great picnic,” told Louis Iturriria, president of the Kern County Basque Club, EuskalKultura.com. The Bakersfield, California located Euskal Etxea celebrated its 43rd annual ‘besta’ on Memorial Weekend and it was even bigger than last year’s edition, even though, in 2014, they also held a NABO convention, which always brings more people. Getting back the tradition of showcasing Herri Kirolak, or Basque rural sports, may have had a positive effect. “I was surprised, the bleachers were packed,” pointed out Iturriria.
Bakersfield, CA. Bakersfield welcomed the Basque-picnic-goers with a warm weather that, at times, reached 100 F, as Louis Iturriria said, with a smile, to this bulletin. But the usual high temperatures didn’t stop people to attend the festival, on the contrary, it was probably one of the most crowded the president of the club might think of: “I’d say there were even 200 more people than last year.” “And last year we had the NABO convention,” he recalled.
The club served around 1,500 lunches and counted more than 2,000 attendees, all through the weekend. “People say it’s very well organized,” in the words of the president. “But I don’t know the reason [for the popularity of this picnic]. We are very fortunate to have a very nice Euskal Etxea, with the (renovated) fronton and a beautiful park. But there is no doubt that it is one of the largest annual (Basque) festivals in the US.”
Riki Lasa, one of the two aizkolaris, or wood choppers, that came from New England to perform at the picnic, told Iturriria that he was amazed with so many kids dancing. “He told me he wishes .jpg)
someday he could do that on the East Coast.” With all the different dance groups’ performances, the program lasted around two hours.
Herri Kirolak
In addition to the always successful esku pilota games –this year the roster featured Sergio Larraya, Inaki Etchegoin, Ibai Iriarte, and Asier Lopez Irigoyen, all of them from the Basque Country−, attendees also enjoyed two rural sports events: a wood chopping competition between the West Coast (Juan Brana, from Reno, Nevada; and Jose Tellechea, from Novato, California) and the East Coast (Riki Lasa and Francisco Gandiaga, both from New England), that the former team won; and a weight lifting exhibition.
The rural sports were an absolute success: “I was surprised, the bleachers were packed,” said Iturriria. “We’ve had rural sports in the past, a long time ago. And people loved to have them again. We will definitely bring them again, I really appreciate what they did.”
To the question whether the Kern County Basque Club might form its own herri kirolak team, Iturriria responded cautiously: “We’ll see but, if the guys liked to, we would be will willing to do it.”
Mil esker, Kristie!
This year’s picnic was a very special one for Kristie Onaindia, who has been teaching dances to the Bakersfield kids for 23 years and, this year, has been her last one as the instructor. “This has been her last year and she saw her students’ last performance at the picnic. She’s done an amazing job. If Basque dances are alive in Bakersfield it is, in great part, thanks to her,” stated Iturriria. The program booklet of the picnic also featured some pages thanking her job and efforts.
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