Fiesta festivities set for Sunday
August 6, 2004
Betty
Comer was 13 when she first moved to San Clemente. It was 1957.
"I remember the Fiesta, it's been here forever," she said. "Early on, you could go to the park, enjoy the fiesta and meet just about everyone one you knew. ... It was like a big family gathering."
The San Clemente Fiesta Street Festival hits 50 this Sunday. It starts at 9 a.m. and ends at 7 p.m. on Avenida Del Mar.Chamber CEO Lynn Wood said they usually get 25,000 in attendance at the yearly event. Things have changed since the event's early days.
City patriarch Don Divel, 81, came to town in 1927. He was only 5. There were about 300 people in town then, he recalled, half of them were retired and half worked for town founder Ole Hanson. He said probably 200-300 people were in attendance at the first Fiesta, including horses and dogs.
"We knew every dog in town," he said. He said there were a lot of horses from San Juan Capistrano that came down for the Fiesta in the 1950s. The Capistrano High School band would attend, he said.
There was also a car show, but not classic. "The only cars they had in those days were those people were driving," he said. "The classic in those days, people were driving."
These days the Fiesta not only features a Classic Car Show, but there is also a motorcycle show. This year's event has three stages of ongoing live entertainment. Some of this year's bands include the Tijuana Dogs and the Christian Simmons Band. Other bands include Blue Vision, Hit the Wall, Hunting Waldo Band, Kathi Burg Band and Thornbirds. There will be performances by the Boys & Girls Club Dance Troupe and Puppets on Parade. Contests include Rocky's Surf City fear factor, hula hoop, pie-eating, diaper derby, pickle-eating and the limbo.
Public tasting for the Salsa Challenge begins at 11 a.m., winners are announced at 2:30 p.m.
There will also be an arts and crafts show and children's activities -- a petting zoo, water slide, pirate ship bouncer, a puppet show and more.
There is no admission fee to the Fiesta, and a free shuttle service will be available from San Clemente High School, 700 Avenida Pico. Lois Divel, who has lived in San Clemente since 1938, said that one year in the 1950s, Don and another local dressed as clowns, pulled carts and threw candies to the children. "We used to have wonderful floats," she said. There was one of a Navy replica of a battleship that would shoot fake guns. They even had a large locomotive in the parade.
"We had a lot of troops, Marine and Navy people in the parade ... different floats," she recalled of the early years when there was a parade as part of the Fiesta.
Comer said when she first came to San Clemente, the city held the Fiesta in the yard of the old Community Center. When it outgrew that spot, they moved it over to Plaza Park, now Max Berg Plaza Park. It was held in conjunction with a parade. The Chamber of Commerce sponsored rides and activities in the park, Comer said.
"This was like a major activity in town," Comer said. "There was not much going on at that time."
For information, go to www.schamber.com