2. Controversy Clouds Past Salsa-Fests, expected again this year

(Excerpted from local newspaper)

Salsa-Fest, a celebration marking the end of the harvest and the beginning of salsa production, has suffered stains to its reputation over the past two consecutive years.

During the 2013 Opening Ceremonies, Duane Hawkinson, owner of Duane’s pretty good Smokehouse Salsa, climbed to the top of his roof, raising his arms skyward, a shovel in one hand and an empty salsa jar in the other (“I do it for the drama,” he admitted, “and the kids seem to get a kick out of it. Rock throwing rarely happens anymore”), and unfortunately slipped and slid down the entire length of the roof until he came to a stop, dangling precariously on the edge for several minutes. Rumors swirled that his “slip” was actually an attempted suicide brought on by the pressures of Salsa-Fest itself. “Sure, everyone was taking pictures with their cell phones. A few were taking selfies with me photobombing them as I dangled in the background,” Hawkinson said, “but did anyone think to prop the ladder back up?”

The police were called.

Performing the ceremony again in 2014, Hawkinson was confronted by an angry neighbor, who claimed that from his vantage point on the roof he could get a “pretty good” view of his neighbor’s wife in the shower. Denying the allegation, Hawkinson offered in his defense, “I would never do such a thing, and besides, your wife could try closing the curtains, and do you know how hard it is not to look when you're not supposed to look . . . "* In a follow-up interview Hawkinson observed  so many people had witnessed his neighbor’s wife in the shower it had become “a nightly community event for most of the neighborhood men and a few of the women--especially when the cable's out.”

The police were called.

Expecting trouble again this year, police plan to show up in advance of the 2015 Salsa-Fest. Off the record, one officer quipped, “This whole matter can go away for just one free jar of Duane’s pretty good Smokehouse Salsa.”

He was later fired.

*Editor’s Note: Hawkinson went on and on along these lines—it’s hard to stuff a sock in his pie hole once he gets wound up--invoking works of anthropology, art history, and current hip-hop for the better part of the afternoon, until he got dizzy, fearing yet another tumble off the roof.