Something for Everyone

VENTURA —  Three days after Thanksgiving and 24 days before Christmas, hungry shoppers craving holiday bargains picked through piles of merchandise, haggled with vendors and wrangled for parking--a commodity that on Sunday was worth more than gold.

The scene, reminiscent of the post-Thanksgiving mayhem at local shopping malls, was actually Main Street in downtown Ventura, which was transformed into a seven-block-long outdoor bazaar for the city’s Holiday Street Festival ’96.

Thousands of shoppers from across the region walked through downtown parks and a stretch of Main Street between Ventura Avenue and Fir Street. Hundreds of booths sold everything from Andean flutes and pictures of barns painted on license plates to hand-thrown pottery and quilted pillows.

Shoppers got the chance to become reacquainted with one of Ventura’s oldest shopping districts, now better known for its nightclubs, cafes and an abundance of secondhand stores.

“This is a beautiful area,” said one shopper, speaking over the din of Christmas carols and chattering children while marveling at the old-fashioned storefronts and stone office buildings, many built in the 1920s.

Carolers dressed in Victorian-era garb worked their way through the multitude singing to anyone willing to stop and listen. Dancers in ethnic costumes clogged, jigged and twirled on several stages set up in parks and on side streets.

“We came down here to watch the people. That’s the funnest part,” said Jeff Daniel, 28, of Ventura, who was walking the fair’s crowded sidewalks with his 6-year-old son, Christian.

“We’re getting the kids out of the house, but I don’t want to buy anything right now. After this weekend, you’ve got to be kidding me,” Daniel said.

Daniel, like many people, seemed more intent on taking in the street fair’s sights and sounds and the smells of foods ranging from Christmas tamales and tri-tip burritos to gyros and falafel.

South of Ventura City Hall, the mood was decidedly more somber, as shoppers and others quietly read names sewn on several panels of the AIDS Memorial Quilt displayed on California Street near the statue of Father Junipero Serra, founder of the San Buenaventura Mission.

Near the mission, in a small park on Main Street between an antique store and a fabric shop, scores of children played with goats and other farm animals in a portable petting zoo and watched a show about the meaning of Christmas put on by the Alphabet Soup Puppeteers.

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About 300 youngsters also assembled picture frames using Popsicle sticks and pasta and made bird feeders using pretzels, peanut butter and sesame seeds at crafts tables in the park supervised by Cecelia Thoma of Ventura.

“It gives [kids] something to do other than looking at people’s knees all day,” Thoma said while helping a kindergartner fashion a paper plate and colored macaroni into an angel.

Thoma’s 11-year-old son, Russell, said that helping his mom with the crafts will make it easier to buy Christmas presents this year.

“We get minimum wage to help kids with crafts,” Russell said. “It’s not a bad deal.”

The heavy foot traffic on Main Street was also a good deal for many downtown merchants, including Mike Chandler at Dexter’s Camera, whose decision to stay open Sunday for the street fair netted him a big sale--a telescope for some lucky stargazer.

“It’s kinda neat. They ought to do it more often,” Chandler said. “In the summer, they really ought to do something like this.”

Things were also busy at Wild Planet, a bustling Day-Glo green shop on Main Street selling music, psychedelic posters and other trappings of today’s MTV generation.

“Ever since Thanksgiving, it’s been nuts--now they’ve had this and it’s crazy,” said Brian McDonald, 28, of Ventura, who was tending Wild Planet’s counter, packed with decals, incense, mystic crystals and silver skull jewelry. Despite the holiday-inspired cheerfulness that permeated almost every corner that the street fair touched, some people, particularly the black-clad local youths who consider downtown a second home, were less impressed with the festive atmosphere.

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“It’s good for the stores but not for the locals,” said Ian Ritchie, 14, of Ventura. Ian, sporting a 6-inch Mohawk hairdo, sat with two friends in front of Wild Planet for half an hour dejectedly watching passersby.

“Yeah,” said Ian’s friend, Gina, also 14, playing with her nose ring and looking bored. “There’s too many people.”