The temperature in St. Paul’s Rice Park on Wednesday: 0 degrees.
The temperature of the hotdish: 160 degrees.
Now them’s the numbers we need to hear.
In contrast to the past few years of warm weather, slumping finances and controversial Vulcan behavior, this time, the St. Paul Winter Carnival seems – oh, please, don’t jinx this – to be going off without a hitch.
“We couldn’t ask for a better start,” said Kate Kelly, president of the St. Paul Festival & Heritage Foundation, which runs the carnival. “Mother Nature, knock on wood.”
If things go smoothly, she said, the festival should end up financially in the black, which isn’t always a given.
Carnival officials had no “ta-daaah” performance to kick off festivities Wednesday and considered the evening’s Landmark Center party for carnival volunteers to be the real start.
Lunch-hour browsers, however, were strolling exhibits in Landmark Center and Rice Park, which didn’t have much in it yet.
All the action was in the hotdish tent at Fifth and Washington streets.
Copyright 2008 Pioneer Press.
