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Frank Varga
The tulips on the sidewalk are almost in full bloom, but the first day of the Downtown Mount Vernon Street Fair arrived with cooler temperatures and fewer visitors than in some years past.
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MOUNT VERNON — The Downtown Mount Vernon Street Fair is the perfect meeting place for two longtime friends.
Nanc McNamar comes from Bellingham and Kathy Kilgore from Lynnwood. They have met in the middle for more than two decades.
“We look. Sometimes we buy,” McNamar said Friday. “We like the being outdoors and looking at the art,”
Old friends and families abounded at the 24th annual street fair, and at one booth new bonds were in the making between passersby and eight up-for-adoption kittens.
The Downtown Business Community sponsors the event, which drew 170 vendors from eight states this year. The street fair, which occurs during the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival, opened Friday and runs from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. today and from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday.
Friday was a chilly day for browsing wares. But that did not stop many attendees who came for the live music, popcorn, clowns and crafts. Children lined up at the face-painting booth, adults wondered at fine photography, and some indulged in warm curly fries, heaping burritos or plates of steaming Thai and Indian food. Lemonade seemed the toughest sell.
“Want a $9 lemonade?” one fairgoer joked to another.
There were many shopping, selling or eating. Gustavo Vargos was one of the few there to paint. Dabbing warm colors onto a canvas streaked with daffodil fields, the Burlington cook and painter said he does the same at many local fairs.
Vargos had his easel outside the Tri-Dee art supply store, which was showcasing one of his completed works in the window. But he was not out to make sales. He said he just likes it when kids run up to watch him paint.
But many vendors take it more seriously.
Ed Halterman of Port Angeles makes a job out of fairs. He goes to 35 to 40 fairs and festivals in the Puget Sound area each year. Friday, his custom-painted signs booth is not too busy, but he expected things to pick up.
He had time to chat about the fair business so he shared a strategy.
“I don’t eat the fair food. If you eat too much, and you’re sitting down all day, you get sleepy,” Halterman said.
Kathleen Shaw, another frequent fair attendee had a trick, too: Kittens always draw a crowd. Shaw, outreach coordinator for Arlington-based Purrfect Pals, passed out brochures and encouraged visitors to pet the eight tiny kittens up for adoption.
By Friday afternoon, two kittens already had takers.
• Elliott Wilson can be reached at 360-416-2147 or at .
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