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A ‘Fall Festival’ replaces embattled Fiesta Hermosa
by Robb Fulcher
The increasingly controversial Labor Day installment of the Fiesta Hermosa street fair, renamed the "Fall Festival," will fill downtown with wine, vendor booths and song on the weekend of Sept. 1 through Sept. 3.
Arts-and-crafters from throughout the west will hawk wares from their booths 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on all three days. The festival also will feature kiddy rides, a petting zoo, a restaurant cantina, two entertainment stages, and a beer and wine garden. The event, centered at Pier and Hermosa avenues, is expected to bring in about 120,000 visitors, according to the Hermosa Beach Chamber of Commerce and Visitors Bureau.
Special events new this year will include an oompah band, and country western music with a line dancing instructor.
Bands performing on the main stage, at Pier Avenue and the Strand, and on a smaller stage the beer garden include tribute bands playing the music of Neil Young, the Beatles, Santana, Steely Dan, Motown, the Doors, and Creedence Clearwater Revival. The Zydeco Party Band and Hippie Limbo also will perform.
A free shuttle bus will run about every half-hour, between 7:30 a.m. and 7:30 p.m., from a TRW parking lot at Manhattan Beach Boulevard and Doolittle streets, carrying people to the event and back. Parking is also available at Mira Costa High School, with WAVE Buses providing free shuttle service to and from the festival.
All’s fair
Meanwhile, city officials plan to survey Hermosa residents to determine whether they want to continue with the twice-a-year street fair, which is also held over the Memorial Day weekend. The survey will ask about other big summer events as well.
The city council in June approved a plan by the chamber of commerce to spare the Labor Day weekend installment of the fair, with some changes designed to make the event more family-oriented and give it more of a classic Hermosa flavor.
The Fall Festival will feature decorations of pumpkins, hay bales and colored corn, plus the new attractions such as line dancing lessons.
But the changes do not address criticisms from some business owners who say they lose parking spaces and customers to the street fairs, which dominate the downtown on two of the year’s busy three-day weekends. Some residents also have complained of traffic congestion and parking problems.
The council also has begun studying other ways to fund the chamber of commerce, which gets almost all its operating money -- about $80,000 a year -- from the street fairs. The council is studying the possibility of raising the money through increased business taxes, which under state law must be approved by Hermosa voters. ER