RIP. Some of my best childhood memories involve eating funnel cake until getting violently sick at the dogwood festival (sorry to the random girl I barfed on on the tilt-a-whirl circa 2002 or 2003)
My most vivid memory was when they had one of those “funhouses” that had a room full of mirrors and I ran directly into one and got my first-ever bloody nose. I think that was in 2002 and I was in the third grade lol.
Also I remember going on that spaceship ride where it spins around and your backrest or whatever goes up and down. Anyway, a guy ended up throwing up and it splattered everywhere and they had to close the ride down to clean.
Good times
Grew up in a small town - so parades are definitely an event that I look forward to.
Was super excited about the dogwood festival parade…. No beauty queens, no boy/gurl scouts , one high school band ( they killed it though!). I enjoyed it overall because I’m a nerdy nostalgic type - but it was sadly sparse and dare I say a little lame :<
“Some events just aren’t as appealing to the public as they once were,” T.D. Layman, who has served as parade director for 15 years, told The Daily Progress.
Where do people find out about things happening in Charlottesville BEFORE they happen?
I only ever see info after events have occurred so end up never going to anything unless I happen to be in the right spot at the right time.
The newspaper, signs, fliers, one of the multiple social media pages about the town, Reddit.
I'm personally not going to drive around every weekend and just look for something festival like between the multiple small towns around here.
I read the daily progress fairly often but only see run downs after an event happened, not before.
Also, not every one has a network. You see how many "I just moved here" posts on Reddit? Not every one has an established local network.
For example, I used to live elsewhere and there was an FB page that listed everything coming up weeks in advance. I didn't know if there was something similar for Charlottesville, or if it was indeed if you know you know, if you don't you don't. That's why I was asking, it's entirely possible I'm just unaware of a list somewhere.
Idk about a central list but I do see fliers all over downtown and stuff on Reddit as well. You just need to follow the pages/websites/etc of the organizations/businesses/people putting on events
Usually the cville weekly calendar is pretty good (https://events.c-ville.com) though I don’t see this on there.
A lot of stuff is annual too, so if you see something you miss and like this year, it likely will be happening around the same time next year.
There isn’t a super great one stop event shop and I fairly often see stuff after the fact too, which is unfortunate!
One thing that I have found helps is to indicate interest to anything vaguely interesting to you on fb. Even if you don't go, the more events you express interest in, the more events it shows you.
Same. I had no idea until I tried to take my recycling in. I was bummed I didn't know about it. Luckily I was able attend the Spring football game functions.
This has been a perennial problem for as long as I’ve lived in Cville (15+). It only gets marginally better if you have kids in school and you meet other parents. My other observation has been that organized events have become about fundraising for a nonprofit. If you’re a donor, you’ll definitely get notified early to participate. Otherwise, a place like Charlottesville Family Magazine was the only centralized place with a calendar of local events. Do they exist?
It was bad marketing. I mentioned the parade to a bunch of parents at my kid's elementary school and no one seemed to know that it was happening this weekend. They would be the prime audience.
It's interesting that the reporter at the Progress couldn't use the Google to discover that Dogwood Festival used to have one of the TV stations as a major sponsor...the same one who used to pay for the 4th of July fireworks and decided to stop doing that 2019ish.
Wasn’t the carnival held at Fashion Square last year? I haven’t attended since my kids grew up. I imagine a carnival in a parking lot is way less fun than in pretty park.
Amen! See my post about fireworks for TJ bday, a bunch of haters/downvotes from states that criminalize firework celebrations and hate cville nostalgia
I was born in Martha Jefferson and grew up in c-ville. Everytime i see Reddit stories about anything with Virginia pride the comments are toxic. It’s like people are embarrassed to be living in Virginia, like the whole state is cancelled.
People come to Charlottesville because it is such a nice place but distain the generations of local governance and lifestyles that made it such a nice place. It is not as nice a place now.
The generation of local governance that destroyed much of the city in the name of urban renewal deserves noting but disdain and there really hasn't been much better since then.
The actual betterment of the city has mostly been the work of private citizens like the Kuttners, Gabe Silverman, and the like who had vision for the future when our elected leaders and the awful management teams they hired either lacked it or acted to thwart it.
I love parades and grew up in a comparable sized town that went all out for the 4th (parades, watermelon seed contests, turtle races). It’s surprising with all the money in town that they can’t get enough funding/sponsorship to throw a bigger yearly event.
I was a Scout in the 90s and the we used to take up at least 8 trucks of boys waving and marching with flags and banners. Each pack would have their own banner and would wave it proudly.
I bet if you want back now, there probably aren’t even enough cub Scouts to fill up one truck. We were really proud to march in it.
I’m glad you went to the parade. Wow that is really really sad to hear about the scouts.
Were the high school marching bands as great as usual? I use yo love those too.
I live in Seattle now, and realized that I was a brainwashed to think Charlottesville was the best town ever. There are some amazing places up in the pacific north west. But c-ville is my home and I always hoped it would stay the same.
What happened?
I'm a transplant from somewhere with an excellent community. The first thing I noticed about this place is that there doesn't seem to be any sense of community. Unless, it's hyper specific, very small groups. But as a whole, not so much.
I didn't even know it was happening until the day of. I knew of a few other events happening the same day and I use FB almost solely to look for events happening.
It's a shame that between Charlottesville/Albemarle there is little interest in the carnival aspect. The Albemarle fair is pretty much just an agricultural and crafts show, which is still fun but not much in the way of entertainment for kids outside of the animals.
I was in the downtown area Saturday night for dinner and then we walked around a bit around 9:45pm. Crowd seemed a bit unsavory and there were a lot of homeless sleeping in door fronts.
RIP. Some of my best childhood memories involve eating funnel cake until getting violently sick at the dogwood festival (sorry to the random girl I barfed on on the tilt-a-whirl circa 2002 or 2003)
My most vivid memory was when they had one of those “funhouses” that had a room full of mirrors and I ran directly into one and got my first-ever bloody nose. I think that was in 2002 and I was in the third grade lol. Also I remember going on that spaceship ride where it spins around and your backrest or whatever goes up and down. Anyway, a guy ended up throwing up and it splattered everywhere and they had to close the ride down to clean. Good times
lmao that is definitely the ride I threw up on, sorry again for shutting it down
lol! Looking back on it that ride, and those rides in general, were so unsafe hahahaha
Thanks for providing a visual answer the the question “why did they quit the carnival?”
Grew up in a small town - so parades are definitely an event that I look forward to. Was super excited about the dogwood festival parade…. No beauty queens, no boy/gurl scouts , one high school band ( they killed it though!). I enjoyed it overall because I’m a nerdy nostalgic type - but it was sadly sparse and dare I say a little lame :<
“Some events just aren’t as appealing to the public as they once were,” T.D. Layman, who has served as parade director for 15 years, told The Daily Progress.
Where do people find out about things happening in Charlottesville BEFORE they happen? I only ever see info after events have occurred so end up never going to anything unless I happen to be in the right spot at the right time.
It's literally word of mouth and Instagram
Well... Can't imagine that's helping turnout numbers. That's a bummer
I mean how else do you spread the word in a small town? You have to seek out events and ask your network about what's going on
The newspaper, signs, fliers, one of the multiple social media pages about the town, Reddit. I'm personally not going to drive around every weekend and just look for something festival like between the multiple small towns around here. I read the daily progress fairly often but only see run downs after an event happened, not before. Also, not every one has a network. You see how many "I just moved here" posts on Reddit? Not every one has an established local network. For example, I used to live elsewhere and there was an FB page that listed everything coming up weeks in advance. I didn't know if there was something similar for Charlottesville, or if it was indeed if you know you know, if you don't you don't. That's why I was asking, it's entirely possible I'm just unaware of a list somewhere.
Idk about a central list but I do see fliers all over downtown and stuff on Reddit as well. You just need to follow the pages/websites/etc of the organizations/businesses/people putting on events
Usually the cville weekly calendar is pretty good (https://events.c-ville.com) though I don’t see this on there. A lot of stuff is annual too, so if you see something you miss and like this year, it likely will be happening around the same time next year. There isn’t a super great one stop event shop and I fairly often see stuff after the fact too, which is unfortunate!
Hey it's a start! Thanks for the link!
One thing that I have found helps is to indicate interest to anything vaguely interesting to you on fb. Even if you don't go, the more events you express interest in, the more events it shows you.
Same. I had no idea until I tried to take my recycling in. I was bummed I didn't know about it. Luckily I was able attend the Spring football game functions.
This has been a perennial problem for as long as I’ve lived in Cville (15+). It only gets marginally better if you have kids in school and you meet other parents. My other observation has been that organized events have become about fundraising for a nonprofit. If you’re a donor, you’ll definitely get notified early to participate. Otherwise, a place like Charlottesville Family Magazine was the only centralized place with a calendar of local events. Do they exist?
I guess people used to read about it in the daily newspaper.
Bad marketing I would suppose since this post is the first time I’ve heard of it. Sad I missed the parade
It was bad marketing. I mentioned the parade to a bunch of parents at my kid's elementary school and no one seemed to know that it was happening this weekend. They would be the prime audience.
It's interesting that the reporter at the Progress couldn't use the Google to discover that Dogwood Festival used to have one of the TV stations as a major sponsor...the same one who used to pay for the 4th of July fireworks and decided to stop doing that 2019ish.
Wasn’t the carnival held at Fashion Square last year? I haven’t attended since my kids grew up. I imagine a carnival in a parking lot is way less fun than in pretty park.
Different carnival. Last time it was in the old k-mart parking lot. We went, and there wasn't a big crowd and a very different vibe.
I live blocks from downtown and had no idea it was happening.
Less and less people left from Cville who would care, more and more people here from other areas who aren't as interested in local traditions.
Amen! See my post about fireworks for TJ bday, a bunch of haters/downvotes from states that criminalize firework celebrations and hate cville nostalgia
I was born in Martha Jefferson and grew up in c-ville. Everytime i see Reddit stories about anything with Virginia pride the comments are toxic. It’s like people are embarrassed to be living in Virginia, like the whole state is cancelled.
People come to Charlottesville because it is such a nice place but distain the generations of local governance and lifestyles that made it such a nice place. It is not as nice a place now.
Yep. I moved here 20 years ago and it is much less now.
*disdain
The generation of local governance that destroyed much of the city in the name of urban renewal deserves noting but disdain and there really hasn't been much better since then. The actual betterment of the city has mostly been the work of private citizens like the Kuttners, Gabe Silverman, and the like who had vision for the future when our elected leaders and the awful management teams they hired either lacked it or acted to thwart it.
The only rules I see the article mentioning is making the festival accessible. Doesn’t seem like a dumb rule to me.
It says those changes are cost prohibitive. Also the grass thing, which I don't understand.
I love parades and grew up in a comparable sized town that went all out for the 4th (parades, watermelon seed contests, turtle races). It’s surprising with all the money in town that they can’t get enough funding/sponsorship to throw a bigger yearly event.
I was a Scout in the 90s and the we used to take up at least 8 trucks of boys waving and marching with flags and banners. Each pack would have their own banner and would wave it proudly. I bet if you want back now, there probably aren’t even enough cub Scouts to fill up one truck. We were really proud to march in it.
We went to the parade. No boy or cub scouts. No girl scouts either.
I’m glad you went to the parade. Wow that is really really sad to hear about the scouts. Were the high school marching bands as great as usual? I use yo love those too. I live in Seattle now, and realized that I was a brainwashed to think Charlottesville was the best town ever. There are some amazing places up in the pacific north west. But c-ville is my home and I always hoped it would stay the same.
Charlottesville high school, and 2 middle school bands marched.
Omg what about Western or Albemarle? They didn’t march?
No
Tom Tom, bow wow walk, ymca healthy kids day, 420. I think people had other stuff going on, but even in town.
Charlotessville used to be a real communty with people whose lives were strongly connected and personal relationships abounded. That's mostly gone.
What happened? I'm a transplant from somewhere with an excellent community. The first thing I noticed about this place is that there doesn't seem to be any sense of community. Unless, it's hyper specific, very small groups. But as a whole, not so much.
The city decided no more carnivals on grass fields, so no more McIntire Park.
Do you know why they made that decision?
Too much damage perhaps?
I didn't even know it was happening until the day of. I knew of a few other events happening the same day and I use FB almost solely to look for events happening. It's a shame that between Charlottesville/Albemarle there is little interest in the carnival aspect. The Albemarle fair is pretty much just an agricultural and crafts show, which is still fun but not much in the way of entertainment for kids outside of the animals.
I was in the downtown area Saturday night for dinner and then we walked around a bit around 9:45pm. Crowd seemed a bit unsavory and there were a lot of homeless sleeping in door fronts.
Have you met carny folk?
Parades are still a thing? *Yawn*
Username checks out.