Big Hat Days is a coming-out party for Clovis residents, vendors after COVID hiatus
Residents from Clovis and throughout the surrounding San Joaquin Valley took advantage of not-too-hot weather and reduced pandemic restrictions to flock to one of the region’s first major street festivals since COVID-19 upended normal routines 15 months ago.
Big Hat Days, the two-day street fair that dominates a six-block stretch of Pollasky Avenue in the Old Town district of Clovis, got underway under sunny skies on Saturday and continued Sunday. As many as 140,000 people were expected to browse vendor booths, snack at food trucks, swig a cold brew in a beer garden, and enjoy live music over the weekend, said leaders of the Clovis Chamber of Commerce, which organizes the event.
This is the 83rd year for the festival, ordinarily held in April as a kickoff to a month of community events highlighted by the annual Clovis Rodeo. Both Big Hat Days and the rodeo were canceled by the coronavirus pandemic last year.
While the rodeo did move forward in April, Clovis chamber officials had decided in January – when transmission of the coronavirus remained out of control in Fresno County and the vaccine situation was still uncertain – to delay Big Hat Days by two months.
The timing could not have been better, chamber membership director Diana Hunnicutt said Saturday morning. “It’s a great day, and the weather is perfect,” she said. “We’re very pleased with what we’re seeing so far.”
“It’s a fabulous feeling to bring it back and see the smiling faces, and to know that we put a lot of work into bringing this back this year in a safe way,” Hunnicutt said. “Last year was so difficult for so many people, and the cancellation of events.”
Fewer vendor booths
The 2021 event attracted more than 300 food, art, craft and other vendors to the stretch of Pollasky Avenue and its side streets between Third and Ninth streets. That’s down by between 50 and 100 compared to previous years, Hunnicutt said.
Hunnicutt and chamber president/CEO Greg Newman both said the reduced number is due to some past vendors who may not have financially survived the pandemic, as well as to having the event two months later than normal, at a time when vendors have options at other events that are also picking up as COVID-19 restrictions ease across the state.
“And we have to be spaced out more, so we couldn’t have as many vendors anyway,” Hunnicutt said.
Signs at the street entrances to the event declared that there was no entry without a face mask, but that was widely ignored by the vast majority of visitors on Saturday.
“It’s hard to control,” Newman said. “We did ask people to be respectful of the (Centers for Disease Control) guidelines that are in place, but it’s an outdoor event, so the masking is not a requirement.”
Newman added that food vendors were wearing masks and following other safety requirements, and people serving beer in the beer garden were wearing masks and gloves, “so we’re taking those extra protocols where necessary.”
First-time visitor San Garcia and his two children, Sam Jr. and Emy, came to Clovis from Las Vegas for Big Hat Days after relatives here told them about the event.
“So we said we were coming to visit them this weekend and to see the festival,” he said.
The family already had stopped by an Elks Lodge booth for barbecued tri-tip and hot dogs, and were getting ready to board a kiddie train for a short jaunt through Old Town.
“It’s just great,” Garcia said. “The weather is perfect, and we’re going to stick around for the live music” and come back again Sunday.
No longer ‘living in fear’ of COVID
Garcia said Las Vegas has been fully opened from coronavirus restrictions for weeks, so being amid thousands of other unmasked people packing Pollasky Avenue didn’t concern him. “I’m not worried,” he said. “I’m not living in fear of getting COVID anymore.”
Another visitor, a Clovis resident who identified herself only by her first name, Sylvia, was one of the few people attending who was wearing a face mask. Like Garcia, she said she was “not worried at all” about being in a large crowd.
“It just feels liberating to be out and about (after) being hunkered down for over a year,” she said. “Just coming out to enjoy life again is wonderful.”
Sylvia added that except for last year’s canceled event, she and her family have been coming to Big Hat Days every year for about 15 years.
That’s music to the ears of the organizers. “On the whole, we’re seeing a lot of optimism out there, we see a lot of growth, we see people coming back,” Hunnicutt said. “On the whole, we’re seeing a good, positive return by our businesses.”
“For the longest time during COVID, you’d start to see some light and then we’d get pulled back again” as case rates and hospitalizations fluctuated up and down, Hunnicutt said. “There was a lot of that back and forth that really left businesses struggling to know what to do.”
With Tuesday’s expected economic reopening, “it looks very promising,” she added. “With a greater comfort level, businesses are excited to be back and fully opened, to have events, to do the things they did pre-COVID.”
This story was originally published June 12, 2021 at 2:42 PM.
