Where I Hid The Exclamation Mark...
Cai reflects on his time at Rife Magazine and reveals where he hid the exclamation mark.
What St Pauls Carnival means to me
Photo credit to Julian Grant ( ManDem – Julz).
As many of you know, St Pauls Carnival has been around for years and as a young male coming from a Caribbean background, naturally, I have been going to the carnival since I was little (even though I’m still little…)
For me, fest is all about meeting up with the ‘ManDem’, chilling throughout the day and night catching joke. We all wear vests, try to look hench for the ‘GyalDem’, eat jerk chicken and just jam by either the dancehall section or the house section.
Of course it wouldn’t be fest if some sort of trouble never happened. When I say trouble, I don’t mean anything negative by it. I mean, boys being boys/girls being girls, squabbling over something that happened years ago and just attention seeking. It’s a little bit of drama and it adds to the vibe. After their funny 5 minutes, everyone is friends again and enjoys the rest of the carnival.
The next day, after the carnival is over, everyone will be talking about Shanquisha who had a funny 5 minutes with Jayquan and how ‘live’ the carnival was in general. Some people however, will often say, ‘fest was sh*t, I ain’t going next year’, although they said this last year… and the year before… and the year before that. Then we all wait a whole year for the next one and repeat the same thing.
This is my personal average experience of St Pauls Carnival. It generally depends on who I hang with. If I was to roll with middle class white people, we’d probably see the floats for an hour, eat some food and be on our way. If I was with my yardie crew, it would be all about getting a ‘whine’ with that beautiful girl. If it was with drum and bass heads, we’d be on a non stop bopping flex, stood next to the same speaker for hours, cans in our hands shouting, yeah.
Depending on what type of person you are, depends on the type of carnival you’ll have!
I’m looking forward to the carnival this weekend, but I’m going to take it easy. Hopefully I will see you there doing our #SPSelfie challenge! Cya there.
Click here to check out the St Pauls Carnival website.
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About the author
Little Ryan
Ryan Francis was one of Rife's founding Young Journalists. He is mainly known as Little Ryan for doing his comedy shows on YouTube called TheLittleRyanShow. He is also a Freelancer and works with a small upcoming business called Watson Media. He can mostly be found backflipping out of bed and making a cuppa tea.
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