Sunny Sunday draws better crowd to Italian Fest
Cold, windy weather forced the Italian-American Club to shut down its Italian Festival early on Saturday, but as the gates opened at noon on Sunday, the sun was shining and Chairman Bob DelGross was hoping for a more successful turnout.
With the weather still chilly, chilly, DelGross hoped the club would see attendance top 8,000 its second year of the festival.
“Yesterday, we just didn’t have the sun,” DelGross said.
Scheduled to run until 10 p.m. on Saturday, the club decided to shut everything down by 6:30.
The upside of the disappointing first day was that the entertainment – which included the Florida Jersey Boys – decided to play on Sunday.
“Hopefully the people here yesterday were able to spread the word about the entertainment,” DelGross said.
Volunteers make the festival possible, DelGross said, especially when it comes to the food. The club’s members cooked most of the food being served, including sausage and peppers, meatball subs, chicken and eggplant parmesan and pasta pagioli, according to DelGross.
The group also found themselves fighting rain during the festival’s inaugural year in 2010, so next year they could be looking to move the festival up, or push it back.
“Last year, on Saturday, we were just booming … but then it died,” DelGross said. “Next year it might be a little earlier, or a little later.”