Experience creating three-dimensional illusion is one of the skills artist Anthony Cappetto will bring to the Spring Stroll’s chalk art festival. In the village there’ll be demonstations by Cappetto and another professional artist, Ridgefield High School artists will compete for a $250 prize, and down at the Boys & Girls Club kids will be doing chalk art on the sidewalks.
Spring is on the rise, winter’s in retreat, cold and dark be gone! Let sidewalks blossom with faces and families, community and commerce.
With ribbons and lights, music and magic, food and flowing wine, the Spring Stroll will bloom up and down Main Street Friday night, and all day Saturday, bringing a May Day theme to Ridgefield’s village.
Downtown Ridgefield’s Spring Stroll will be Friday evening from 5 to 9 and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.
To set the festive mood, village lampposts will decorated with ribbons that recall traditional Maypoles, and with lights, and Friday evening kids will be given free glow bracelets to wear as they promenade on village sidewalks.
“We’ll be giving away 1,000 luminous glow bracelets for the children, which should make Main Street look beautiful when it gets dark,” said Stroll co-chairman Emma Hardiman, proprietor of The Purple Frog gift shop.
“People seem to like to come out in the evening when the town is lit up,” said Downtown Ridgefield President Kathy Graham. “We thought lighting the lampposts, plus the glow bracelets for the kids — there’s 1,000 of them, so 1,000 people walking about with yellow glow bracelets …”
“It’s been a long winter and we want everybody out, enjoying the downtown area, we want to get everybody together …”
“Celebrating the start of spring,” Hardiman finished.
The addition of Friday evening to the Downtown Ridgefield organization’s spring event — and the renaming of it as Spring Stroll — is meant to echo December’s highly successful Holiday Stroll, which has grown into one of the town’s major community events, filling sidewalks and stores.
“We like to try something new, so it doesn’t get stale,” said Graham, a vice president of Fairfield County Bank who’s been involved in organizing Downtown Ridgefield’s spring events for 15 years now.
“In the beginning we had Spring Fest and we had trolley cars. Then we went to ‘Ridgefield’s Gone Country’ for a couple of years. And we wanted to do something new for this year, and we thought of ‘Spring Stroll’ because everybody loves the Holiday Stroll.”
(There will still be a Ridgefield Gone Country barbecue festival at the Community Center Saturday and Sunday.)
“And we wanted to add Friday night. It evolved because it was May Day — Friday was May the first. We got the idea of May Day, the ribbons, the carnival, and it grew from there,” said Hardiman.
The Downtown Ridgefield committee’s inspiration came in part from event co-chairman Ursula Hanavan of Interiors and Designs by Ursula, who remembers May Days from her childhood in the rural Iowa village of Blairstown, population 700.
“When I was a young child we’d wake up on May first, May Day, open our front doors, and our friends would bring little baskets,” she said.
“They were filled with all different kinds of treasures — sometimes vegetables from the garden, flowers out of the garden. We’d also distribute our May Day baskets.
“This was 5:30 in the morning. It was so exciting.”
The lampposts’ decorations reflect the two influences.
“The pole part of the lamppost will have miniature bright lights, like we do for Holiday Stroll, and hanging down from the lamp part will be streamers and ribbons, like a Maypole,” Graham said.
“We thought if we did the ribbons, like the old Maypole, it would give us that color and fluttery magic of the ribbons,” said Hanavan.
The merchants enjoy the stroll events not so much as sale days but as statements of community spirit.
“We love the idea of opening our stores as a thank-you to people,” Hanavan said.
“We meet new people. People bring their friends from all over. It’s not a shopkeeper trying to sell their wares, it’s a community event.”
There’ll be a lot going on.
Bailey closed Friday
“In line with our carnival theme, we’ve booked jugglers, stilt walkers, unicyclists, balloon artists, a magician,” Hardiman said.
“There will be a Caribbean Vibe Steel Drum Band performing all evening in front of town hall.”
A major event Friday evening is the fashion show, from 6:15 to 7 on Bailey Avenue, which will be closed Friday evening between Town Hall and Books on the Common.
“We decided to go even further and close Bailey Avenue Friday night to hold a fashion runway show, to allow lots of stores to work together,” Hardiman said.
“So we’ve got 12 stores taking part, from clothing to jewelry to baking aprons.”
“The clothing is going to be men’s, women’s and children’s,” Graham said.
Participating stores include Addessi Jewelers, Audrey Road, The Candlelight Shoppe, Craig’s Fine Jewelry, Elizabella’s, Hutton’s Fine Menswear, Interiors and Designs by Ursula, Lyn Evans, Nancy O, Olley Court, The Purple Frog, and with cookout aprons, Ridgefield Hardware.
“Christine O’Leary is going be the emcee,” Graham said. “She’s a comedian, she’s very funny.”
After the fashion show the runway will be reconfigured for a demonstration by dancers from the Fred Astaire Dance Studio in Branchville.
There’ll be magic, free, Friday in the town hall lobby.
“The magician is local resident Tom Pesce,” Graham said. “He’s going to be giving two magic shows at town hall, one from 7 to 7:45 and then 8:15 to 9.”
A Kentucky Derby warm-up party at Keller Williams Real Estate Friday night from 5 to 9 will honor the tradition of elaborate Kentucky Derby hats with the chance to try making them. Straw hats, artificial flowers and ribbons will be available for hat-making, and non-alcoholic mint juleps will be served.
Also Friday, the library will begin its children’s book sale, from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., and the Keeler Tavern Museum will have a reception for artist Tina Phillips’ exhibition in the carriage barn.
Elizabella’s Bake Shop is having a baking contest, and the judging is Friday, May 1.
“It’ll be judged by the bakers from Elizabella’s, ably supported by sous chef Shane Gogarty from Bailey’s Backyard,” Hardiman said.
Ten restaurants and food shops are offering specials Friday night and Saturday: The Ancient Mariner, whiskey chicken and barbecued ribs; Tiger’s Den, spring Caribbean chicken and mango pineapple salsa; Planet Pizza, jerk chicken pizza; Prime Burger, citrus grilled shrimp salad; Luc’s Cafe, ‘Le Point of View’ cocktail; Terrasole, Golden Terrasole Martini; Chez Lenard, Le Hot Dog Alamo; Deborah Ann’s Sweet Shoppe, key lime ice cream; Elizabella’s Bake Shop, lemon lavender tea and lemon shortbread.
To free parents up to enjoy a quiet meal out, the Boys & Girls Club is having movie and pizza night from 6:30 to 8:30 Friday. The fee — $10 for members, $15 for nonmembers — includes the movie, pizza and popcorn.
Chalk art
A big activity this year is a chalk art festival, which will feature two professional artists, a contest among Ridgefield High School students, and also chalk drawing for younger kids Saturday at the Boys & Girls Club.
New York City chalk artist Anthony Capetto will be outside Fairfield County Bank Insurance starting Thursday at about 11 a.m., and he’ll work again Friday from 10 to 5 and Saturday from 10 till he’s done, Graham said.
And Mark Panzarino a New York graffiti-style artist, will work Saturday from 10 to 5 in front of town hall.
Ridgefield High School artists will also work on the sidewalks, after a master class from Anthony Capetto.
“They’ll work all along Main Street,” Hardiman said.
“They’re getting a master class from Anthony at 9 a.m. on Saturday, and they’ll start work at 10 a.m.”
“This is a competition for those eight high school artists,” Graham said. “And there will be a prize of $250 for the winner. The judging will be by well-known local artist Tina Sturges.”
A children’s sidewalk chalk festival will be among the events at the Boys & Girls Club Saturday from 10 to 3. There will also be Mother’s Day card-making, May Day basket-making, and a drawing contest.
Special Saturday events around town include mini race cars for kids to drive at Georgetown Auto Body on Catoonah Street, starting at 11.
“The kids sit in them and drive them around the bays at Georgetown Auto Body,” Graham said.
There’ll be a petting zoo at Nancy O’s on Catoonah Street from 1:30 to 3 Saturday, featuring a pig, a goat, sheep, bunnies, and ducks.
The Ridgefield’s Gone Country Barbecue Festival will bring food tents with barbecue from several local restaurants and also a barbecue cooking contest to the Ridgefield Community Center, which is co-sponsoring the event with the Ridgefield Rotary. (See other story.)
At 11:30 Saturday morning, the Ridgefield Library will have Kahana Hula performing music, stories, song, and dance from the Hawaiian and Polynesian cultures — a show aimed at people of all ages.
The Friends of the Library will also continue their children’s book sale at the library Saturday from 9 to 5.
Community festival
“Everything we do is free. The performers, the magician, the bands are all from Downtown Ridgefield and the sponsors,” Graham said.
“Our goal always with our Downtown Ridgefield events, we want everybody to support the local merchants, see what everybody has to offer, and come out and have good time — it’s like a big town festival.
“That’s one thing about our town,” she said. “We’re a very small town that puts on very big events for the size of our town, and we really try to have that sense of community, but also be supportive of our local merchants.
“We’ve got a beautiful downtown area — most towns don’t have something like that.”
“There’s flyers all over town that people can pick up,” Hardiman said. “Merchants are also advertising on the festival page in this week’s Ridgefield Press.
“It’s a reminder that there are some lovely stores in the town,” she said.
“We hope people will come to town and maybe see a new restaurant or shop they didn’t know was there before — and you get to meet the store owners, so it’s very personal,” Graham said.
“It’s been a hard winter for the merchants, too,” she said. “We want to be supportive to them because we want to keep Main Street beautiful.”