If you can’t bring Black Rock to the parade, why not bring the parade to Black Rock?
The Barnum Festival website features a first-ever new route for the annual street parade June 29, 11 a.m. commencing Fairfield Avenue at Ash Creek, advancing east ending at Food Bazaar, near the West End of the district. Ash Creek demarcation divides Bridgeport and Fairfield.
(Yes, tony Black Rock is in Bridgeport, no Black Rock neighborhood in Fairfield.)
A few years ago leadership at the annual Greater Bridgeport St. Patrick’s Celebration switched the parade route focus from Downtown to Black Rock, clearly a prescient move boosting attendance.
St. Pat’s Parade has been relocated to Black Rock producing enthusiastic crowds.
The Barnum Festival has had several primary routes in its history, Main Street, Park Avenue, then confined to Seaside Park, back to Park Avenue. If the new parade route is heavily promoted in Black Rock, it could resuscitate a new existence.
When it comes to neighborhood support, Black Rockers are vigorously enthusiastic. The annual Black Rock parade is a community rock star with thousands in attendance. They’ve eagerly shown up for St. Pat’s parade as well. The BarFest parade in Black Rock also delivers alliance value, bringing nearby Fairfield residents into play as well as the Black Rock business district loaded with restaurants, bars, and music venues, all tasty vantage points. What’s better than a few pops and a parade?
My mother, raised in the Park City, is my Bridgeport genesis. As a kid in the 1960s, I was helmed in then tiny suburban Monroe, a few thousand people, but Bridgeport was still the epicenter for the good stuff: jobs, groceries, shopping, hospitals, doctors, parks, nightclubs, and entertainment.
We were a one-car family so mom walked a half mile, not a big deal, to Route 111 in Monroe to board a bus to Bridgeport to pick up a few things. No 25-8 Connector then, a straight shot up Main Street.
When dad was off work she was behind the wheel to Bridgeport, grocery shopping to load up the car for a week or two of nourishment. My mother zoomed a hot foot that made Mario Andretti envious. There wasn’t much finesse, jam pedal to floor. Rocket lady in action. Every now and then we got pulled over. Mom was exceptional talking her way out of things.
“Look at my boy, he needs to eat, so hungry.”
“Okay, lady, watch the foot, please?”
When the cop pulled away, mom jammed the gas. Off we went to Frosinone on Main Street, sweet spot for Italians in the North End, elongated salted, dried cod hanging from the ceilings. My job was to carry the stinky cod into the car. Think of foul-smelling serrated carboard. Mom reconstituted the dried cod in the bathtub. Once softened it found its way into casseroles. The smell lingered when I took a bath. I wasn’t sure if it was me or the cod.
Pizza in Monroe? Forget about it. Hop in the car, andiamo! (let’s go) dad drove to Paul’s Pizza on the East Side.
Every year we attended the Barnum Festival parade, my parents favorite spot the corner of North and Park, in front of King Cole, then a grocery institution. Spectator wise it was five, six and seven rows deep (pick me up papa), and one year I recall the cameras from WPIX in New York beaming the parade to the tri-state area. Back then on television you had solely the mega national networks ABC, CBS and NBC. New York local stations such as WPIX, WNEW and WOR beamed into southern Connecticut.
Yankee baseball was broadcast on WPIX so it was a big deal when PIX broadcast the parade.
The BarFest has an entertainment opportunity to recast itself on Fairfield Avenue in Black Rock and heading to the West End where Barnum hosted his winter quarters. Step right up!
A HOME RUN
Flucking Gridlock!
Just a traffic jam affecting a whole network of intersecting Black Rock streets!
Sonny, you can provide live update interviews with your favorite pols on Black Rock Radio!
Right!
Thank you for the memories!
My family lived in Bridgeport until the early 1960s. We were a 1 car family with my mother getting the car on Fridays for grocery shopping. And she rode the bus when she went shopping down town. If my sister and I went with her, one of us pulled the buzzer for the stop going downtown and the other pulled it on the way home. My youngest sister never lived in Bridgeport. My mother would take her grocery shopping. My sister would ask if they were going to the store with the little shopping carts – Sorrentos! My sister loved pushing a grocery car that was her size!
Thank you for sharing Lisa.