Bastille Day Festival 2012

Another bunch of pictures for you to peruse. These are from the annual Bastille Day Festival held at Eastern State Penitentiary. For you out-of-towners, it's not actually operating as a prison now. It's a tourist attraction. Al Capone was once locked up there. Every Halloween they operate a popular haunted house-style tour. And every July there's Bastille Day. This was the first time I checked out the festival and it was apparently revised some this year, so I can't compare it to other years, but it's fun. Essentially, it's a show featuring comedy, song and dance performed by the Bearded Ladies Cabaret, telling the story of the French Revolution (taking many liberties with said story, naturally).

The star of the show was Edith Piaf (who actually lived in the 20th century; I told you, they took liberties with the story). I got there in time to see a pre-show rehearsal, and I kind of developed a little crush on this guy. It's the weirdest thing. Men in heels usually don't do it for me.

I took lots of pictures, which are located here. I also took some video, which is after the jump...
First is part of the performance pictured above, in which they enhanced Lady Gaga's "Bad Romance" with new lyrics...



The show eventually leads to their taking Marie Antoinette's (alleged) proclamation of "Let them eat cake!" to a new level, by throwing a few thousand Tastykakes from the top of the prison to the crowd below...



...and I actually caught one! It bounced off someone and came right to me. Best Butterscotch Krimpet I ever had.