Get Your Gourd On: Half Moon Bay Arts & Pumpkin Festival

Sometimes it seems like fall brings out the ravenous animal in each of us. We line up for contests that determine who can stuff the most pie in their piehole. We fly across the country to sit down and chomp through a gargantuan feast of bird. We order double venti whatever pumpkin spice lattes, a drink that sounds delicately autumnal but is really (deliciously?) a sugar-driven punch to the gut. Anything with cinnamon is somehow seasonal, charming, and quickly reduced to crumbs.

Which is not to say that any of this behavior should stop. I am in full favor of autumnal flavor. Which is why the Half Moon Bay Art and Pumpkin Festival, now in its 41st year, holds real appeal. Not only does the event boast a pumpkin pie-eating contest, it also, in the tradition of any good single-food-themed festival, promises treats that probably shouldn’t exist in the outside world (pumpkin churros, pumpkin smoothies, chicken-pumpkin sausages).

Also on the docket: a massive pumpkin weigh-off, the “Picasso of pumpkin carvers” wielding his chisel, a parade, and way more.

Half Moon Bay Art & Pumpkin Festival
October 15-16
9 a.m.-5 p.m.

Main Street
Half Moon Bay

Photo Credit: Half Moon Bay Arts & Pumpkin Festival