By MATT PIKE
St. Joseph Post
The Southside Festival will return to Hyde Park in St. Joseph this weekend, after a year off last year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Festival Co-Chair Gary Pettis says as COVID numbers rose, organizers made the decision to cancel the festival. But the planning made last year will hold up this year.
"We were right in the middle of planning for last years event, and then in July, we decided for safety reasons to go ahead and cancel it," Pettis tells KFEQ/St. Joseph Post. "So we kept the same theme, it was right in the middle of all the planning, we had our them set last year, we had our grand marshal set, a lot of the details already set, so it's a two year planning festival this year."
Pettis says the theme emerged from everything going on during the pandemic.
"Our theme is, essentially it was in the middle of a pandemic last year, we decided to honor the working men and women, the essential workers," Pettis explains. "So we're having this festival in honor of all the everyday working men and women out there that work on the front line."
Pettis hopes that people will come out and enjoy the festivities, and says a big draw of the festival is that it's totally free to get in.
"Everything's free to start with, you can come down and stay all day at the park for free, of course if you want to have some wonderful festival food, you're gonna have all the different vendors out there with their own pricing for that," Pettis says. "And then the crafts, the craft booths will be open, you can buy crafts, these craft vendors down there it's all homemade stuff, no catalogue crafts, it's all homemade they put their blood, sweat, and tears into it."
The festival will run through this weekend (17th-19th) at Hyde Park.
It runs today through 9:30 pm, with opening ceremonies this evening at 6pm, tomorrow from 10 am to 10 pm and wraps up on Sunday, running from noon to 5pm
