Downtown Pittston hosts first NEPA Spring Outdoors Arts and Crafts festival
Apr. 23—PITTSTON — Downtown Pittston has long kept a busy schedule through the spring and summer months, with a variety of events on the calendar to highlight the city's arts, culture and flourishing business district.
On Saturday, with the sun shining and over 70 vendors coming to town, the city welcomed in the season with a brand-new event.
The first-ever NEPA Spring Outdoors Arts & Crafts Festival had the city's Tomato Festival grounds off Main Street buzzing with activity on Saturday afternoon.
"We always try to work arts and crafts into whatever we do," said Pittston City Mayor Mike Lombardo. "We're hoping this is going to become an annual event ... we're really excited."
Both the lower and upper levels of the lots off Main Street were filled with vendors and lined with people making the loop around to see all that the Festival had to offer.
One of the afternoon's big themes among the vendors was cycling, and with good reason: on Sunday morning, a group of bikers from all over the state will take off from Main Street on a 100-mile bike ride.
The ride, known as the "Lu Lacka Wyco Hundo," will take riders on a scenic trip through Luzerne, Lackawanna and Wyoming counties before returning to the Festival grounds at ride's end.
It's a yearly ride, but this year the organizers of the ride came together with the city's event organizers to launch the NEPA Spring Outdoors Arts & Crafts Festival as a prelude to the ride, and as another unique way to showcase plenty of local businesses and business owners.
"It is a great marriage between the ride, and then this festival," Lombardo said. "Anytime we could get a bunch of people downtown to showcase a bunch of our businesses, it's great."
Several of the riders taking part in Sunday's ride were in full gear and ready to ride on Saturday for a "Shake Out Ride," basically a shorter, tune-up ride.
"It's about 20 miles out of the full course," said cyclist Christos Pappas.
Pappas came up to town from Philadelphia to ride the Lu Lacka Wyco Hundo, and he said that he's been riding for a long time.
"I love the nice spells, the good weather," Pappas said. "I'm hopeful that it stays nice tomorrow."
Several of the vendor stands were associated with cycling in some way, including the stand where Pappas spent a good chunk of time browsing on Saturday, at R.E.Load Bags.
Like Pappas, R.E.Load Bags is Philly-based, founded in 1998. The company specializes in storage bags and hand bags for bikers.
"Everything is handmade, they're easily accessible and super handy," said Gerik Forston, of R.E.Load Bags. "We've been coming up for years to do the ride, it seemed obvious to want to take part in this, too."
Pappas said that he used bags like the ones being sold at the Festival to store snacks, his phone and a speaker to listen to music while he rides.
The cyclists hit the road for the Shake Out Ride at about noon. Right near the entrance to the festival grounds, Old Mill Pine employee Dave Ader said that he had provided assistance to at least one rider heading out.
"One of the cyclists came by, they had a flat," Ader said. "We took care of them."
Ader and Roger Kelly manned the tent for Old Mill Pine, a bike shop based out of West Pittston. Kelly said that he had been riding mountain bikes since about 1985.
"It's good for your heart health, it's also great for mental health," Kelly said. "You feel that freedom."
Far from just a cycling festival, however, the full list of local businesses participating in Saturday's festival included a wide variety of local crafters, a couple food and drink shops and a DJ playing music throughout.
With Pittston's always-popular Art Walks scheduled to start up next month, Saturday's festival served as a season opener of sorts for the downtown.
"I really think that's the way to brand this event, as the kickoff to the season," Lombardo said.
