La Tomatina

La Tomatina is a food fight festival held on the last Wednesday of August each year in the town of Buñol in the Valencia region of Spain. The festivities begin with the first event of the Tomatina. It's called the "palo jabón", which means greasy pole. The object of this game is to be the first to climb a greased pole with a ham on top. Sounds pretty weird right? Well it gets crazier! As this game is going on people in the crowd sing and dance while being showered in water from hoses. Once someone is able to drop the ham off the pole, the tomato fight begins! Over 90,000 pounds of are tossed in the air. Participants are recommended to wear goggles and gloves. The tomatoes must also be crushed before being thrown to reduce the risk of injury. After exactly one hour the fight is over and no more tomatoes can be thrown. The whole town square is colored red. Fire trucks hose down the streets and the people use local hoses to remove the tomato paste from their bodies. Some even go to the pool of "los peñones"(rocks) to wash. After all the cleaning, the village cobblestone streets are spotless and good as new since acids of the tomatoes cleaning the surfaces.

 I think it would be fun to have a huge tomato fight in Alex! We could have it on Broadway. All the little shops would be stained red until the fire trucks rolled in to reveal their former glory! I think I would have to create a new rule in addition to the wearing goggles and gloves. Everyone has to wear white t-shirts. I can just see the image of 100s of people wearing white and then all of a sudden tons of tomatoes are lobbed into the air and land on clean white canvases!

http://spanishfood.about.com/od/holidaysfeasts/a/latomatina.htm