After more than a year of seeing events called off or cancelled, crowds flocked to the streets for the annual Mayfest parade Friday evening. While the number of participants was closer to years past, it was an opportunity for folks to get out, according to Jackie Wengert, executive director of the Perryville Area Chamber of Commerce.
“Friday was fabulous and compared to the 10-day forecast prior to Mayfest what we had on Saturday was great,” Wengert said. “People didn’t know what it was going to be like so they came out Friday night and came out in droves. We knew that Saturday no matter what the weather was (like) was going to be lighter.”
“I’d be afraid to estimate how many people came up to us and said, ‘Thank you, thank you, thank you. We needed this. We needed something that was normal again. We needed to get out.’ We had people calling last week, (asking) ‘Are you really gonna have it, Are you really gonna have it?’”
“The parade was about average,” Wengert said. “I think everything went really well, and it seemed like everyone enjoyed it, had a lot of good comments about it, so we’re happy about that.”
For food options, there were 10 vendors, Wengert said, and they did superbly well.
“Some of them opened around noon, prior to the streets getting shut down,” she said. “Food vendors had an awesome weekend. Several of them ran out of food Friday night and Saturday night before closing. We just didn’t know how many people were gonna come out. Friday night was wonderful.”
The evening festivities closed down at 11 p.m.
For the carnival down by the American Legion parking lot, there were long lines shortly after the parade wrapped up.
“Friday night was a huge night for them, it was big down there,” Wengert said.
The Chamber sold approximately two-thirds of pre-sale tickets ahead of time
That option was cheaper than purchasing carnival tickets the day of the event, Wengert said.
