Tacos And Tamales Day 1 Gallery: Beautiful Food, Good Vibes

Laughter, music and the delicious smell of tender asada and steamy tamales wafted into the air at Desert Breeze Park for this year's Tacos and Tamales Festival.

This year, the festival transformed to be a two-day experience of food, music and local artistry that is taking place on Saturday and Sunday. There were lines of food vendors that showcased their top-menu items. Families gathered on the lawn and enjoyed the talented musicians that performed on the Findlay Main Stage.

Due to the high winds that gusted throughout the Vegas Valley on Saturday afternoon, event organizers had to cancel the spray-paint competition called "The Battle." The high winds would have made the competition difficult, and it wasn't ideal conditions for the artists to showcase their talent.

Lucha Libre Las Vegas is a local wrestling group, and this cohort of wrestlers captured the audience's attention.

Each fight was the perfect mixture of comedy and lucha-libre exaggeration with loud slaps, hard kicks and other mind-bending moves. People laughed in joy as the wrestlers fought in a melee-like manner.

Jokes were made, and the wrestlers poked fun at each other, which is another reason why we enjoy a performance from Lucha Libre Las Vegas. It's the ideal combination of fun, comedy and the "magic" element of OG lucha libre wrestling.

Vendors were ample at Tacos and Tamales. Tacos, pupusas, crafted aguas, vegan-style treats, ceviche, foot-long hot dogs, cotton candy, funnel cake; in fact, I could keep going. There was an endless row of food vendors, who were eager to share their recipes and products to the Las Vegas local community.

Big jugs filled with sweet juices and milky fruit cocktails rowed tables, meats turned on vertical skewer grills, shrimps steamed on grills, tortillas sizzled on the griddle, Tacos and Tamales was a celebration of staples that we love from the elotero!

During a performance from the band  Los Ataskados, the lead singer thanked all of the street vendors.

Recently, there have been reports of street vendors being attacked or robbed. Incidents of violence against street vendors have happened across the U.S. with many reports coming out of the Los Angeles area.

"According to publicly available Los Angeles Police Department data, there were 43 reports in July of a street vendor being the victim of a crime, including 25 robberies," an article from Crosstown states. "That 43 incidents is the highest monthly total since at least 2010, and more than double the 20 reports in June. The previous high was the 35 reports in June 2022."

The tranquil time at Tacos and Tamales served as a reminder that the Las Vegas community is a blanket, woven together with hardworking and humble people.