What’s Been Going On – StarCityFAME in Roanoke

Last weekend was a typical Roanoke weekend, amazing and busy as usual. Star City FAME had the pleasure of capturing four great events from some of our incredible people and organizations in and about town. A big part of our “mission” is to bring events online for everyone to see, whether they were there or not, to relive it or to find out what we Roanokers are all about here in the Valley.


Local Colors – A Taste of Culture
“Dragon” Pearl Fu and the Local Colors organization continues their monthly celebration of the cultural kind every second Friday during the warmer season right after the annual Local Colors Festival. We went to one this past month for the Vietnamese “taste” on August 14th.


Car Less Britt Museum - Touring for the Turtles
This new museum established by River Laker (Emerging Artists, Roanoke City Library) in downtown is not only an exhibit of bicycle memorabilia and other interesting bike things, but also promotes going without a motor vehicle by switching to riding a bicycle all over town – as a way of life!! They just hosted a pair of eco-bio experts who spoke on leather-backed turtles and their mission - touring on bike to get the message out.


Star City Roller Girls – Game at Lee Hi Skates vs Little City Roller Girls
The Roanoke Valley has a women’s pro sports team… it’s not basketball, baseball, football, hockey, or golf. IT’S ROLLER DERBY!!! And we got highlights of this awesome, energetic, and crowd-pleasing game.


Sister Cities and Local Colors – International Fashion Show
Ms Pearl Fu was at it again in high style, as she and co-host Tammy Epes presented a fabulous International Fashion Show at the Hotel Roanoke. Members and friends of both organizations participated, including contestants of Miss Roanoke Valley Pageant. The show was presented at the Ladies Luncheon during the Grand Encampment Knights Templar 64th Triennial Conference at the hotel last Monday, August 17.

Videos will be posted on the Star City FAME YouTube channel as well as here. Find us on Twitter and Facebook, too! If you’d like for us to attend a really cool event in Roanoke, just give us a shout and let us know what, when, and where!!

Roanoke Local Colors Celebrates its 19th Year!!

This past May 16th, we once again witnessed the amazing Local Colors Festival at Elmwood Park in beautiful Downtown Roanoke, VA. Led by Founder and Executive Director of Local Colors, Pearl Fu, this annual festival is an internationally recognized cultural event. It is also one of the largest and most anticipated events held in Roanoke.

Pearl began Local Colors 19 years ago and it has grown from four participants in the parade to 89 countries this year. The opening ceremony, before the Parade of Nations, saw each country's members lining up all around the amphitheatre area and winding around the park in vibrant hues of their representative nations' customary and traditional garb, carrying the flags of their native or ancestral lands - a glorious sight to see and acknowledge that people the world over feel priviledged to make a new life here in the greatest land on earth and still can be proud of their heritage as well.

Ms Fu explains on its organization's website, "Local Colors highlights the ethnic and cultural diversity of the Roanoke Valley. It has opened the minds and hearts of many, enriching the quality of life for all who have been part of it."

The annual Local Colors has been documented as a Local Legacy and awarded an Outstanding Event in Southwest Virginia by the Library of Congress. It draws crowds of up to 30,000 - which is an amazing feat for a one day festival - and it is easy to see why. Under the directorship of Ms Fu, this event is spectacular! She personally "enlists" new entries continually throughout the year (and I feel obliged now to consider joining too as a representative of Hungary).

There were many world dancers, singers, and musicians on stage after the Parade of Nations. This year, Local Colors incorporated an International Fashion Show to the repertoire. Visitors were entertained for six hours as well as educated in facts of each nation's backgrounds while the weather cooperated as if out of respect for such an enormously important day to Roanokers and fans from all over.

Star City FAME ran footage of much of the day's celebration and thank Ms Fu for granting camera access to the Local Colors Festival. Below is a short video collage of the Parade of Nations and we will bring you more highlights of this beautiful event shortly, so stay tuned!!

See you around Roanoke!!

Earthquake Roanoke-Style

Hi Y'all! This graphic to the left is courtesy of WSLS of Roanoke, VA. I don't think we had much of anything over which to take a picture or a video of regarding this morning's earthquake - Thank Heavens!!!

However, the US Geological Survey has upped our inital level from a 2.6 magnitude to a 3.0 magnitude earthquake. (I did not feel anything this morning, but that may be due either to working in Entertainment - which means late nights and passing out dead - or to living out in North County, close to Botetourt... I dunno).

In the WSLS report today, Dr. Martin Chapman at the seismological observatory at Virginia Tech stated, “A magnitude three earthquake like we had today would be about a thousand times bigger than a magnitude zero earthquake."

Indeed, that is cause for excitement, both scary and otherwise, if you were awake to have felt it. I lived in Central New Jersey all my life before coming here in 2005, and experienced only one such small earthquake (for which I had been awake). The bed shook, as I recall. It also sounded like a distant rumble of thunder yet you knew it was very nearby as it permeated the darkness of night and did not have the distinct echo of actual far-away thunder. It could be felt through the membranes of your very marrow. Spooky...

I did notice something unusual last night, though. My house is not prone to settling, yet every so often, there were creeks and pops a little around the time before the hour of this quake, which is officially stated to have happened at 4am. I was awake up until about 3am. (Sort of awake, reading a book after a long day of editing and mixing a local songwriter's live CD.)

Well, let's all be glad this wasn't anything more dramatic than something to talk about today. In fact, I had no idea until Ms. Pearl Fu of Local Colors mentioned it on stage at this year's Annual Local Colors event at Elmwood Park in Downtown Roanoke this morning.

By the way, we went out to shoot footage of Local Colors. We'll bring you the video and a blog post on it early this next week. (I ran 3 hours of tape very easily. There was SOOOO much cool stuff that went on, I just couldn't shut the camera off!!)

Hopefully, this quake isn't a pre-shock and will remain a one-off for now. The bigger quake today was definitely the Local Colors festivities!!