Point Arena Merchants Association adopts Flower Power and gives birth to a new festival…..

Point Arena, California

Berkeley Kite Wranglers exhibit large kites on Lighthouse peninsula, Sunday March 14th

The current “Splash” insert for the March 12th edition of the Independent Coast Observer (the area’s weekly newspaper) starts off with an article “from Point Arena Merchants Association, special to the ICO”.   The first three paragraphs describe the birth of a springtime festival for Point Arena:

Daffodils ar blooming all over Point Arena, trumpeting the arrival of spring and the First Annual Point Arena Flower Power Festival and Daffodil Explosion, Saturday and Sunday, March 13 and 14.

The event is sponsored by the Point Arena Merchants Association (PAMA) in response to a need for a springtime event.  When a member mentioned that daffodils blossom all over town and out to the lighthouse and why not have an event centered around that natural sign of spring — a new festival was born.

Point Arena being Point Arena, the merchants group, recalling past days of flower children and other things 60s, named the event the Flower Power Festival and Daffodil Explosion.

On Saturday morning I went down to Main Street and experienced first hand an explosion of daffodils outside the Main Street Gallery, where a show and sale of local arts and crafts were on display for the weekend festival.

Flower Power at 824 Main Street.....

 

inside Main Street Gallery

Botanical Prints by Kirby Leary

 

The above photograph of “Photographic Art” includes the “Point Arena Pintos Calender”.  I found a website of the artist Jacqueline:

http://pointarenapintos.blogspot.com

Arna Means

 There were activities throughout town, with Cioppino seafood stew being served both down at the Arena Cove and in front of the theater on Main Street.

At the library, they had seperate youth and adult Scrabble tournaments…….with early bird participants beginning to set up in this picture on Saturday morning.

A lot more was going on.  People were showing up at the Arena Market and Cafe to buy $2 tickets (and the clues needed) to participate in a Mural Scavenger Hunt…..and, later that night just across the street (and a little up the street), they had a really big concert show at the theater.  (Which included a Master of Jimi Hendrix music, The Ralph Woodson Experience.)

Day two of the festival, Sunday the 15th, shifted somewhat over to the Point Arena Lighthouse just south of town, where spacious peninsula on high bluffs provided perfect staging for a kite exhibition provided by the Berkeley Kite Wranglers.  Early arrivals were treated to a free Fog Signal Building museum and lighthouse tour.

And, finally, I left after being part of the very first wave of tours……and, saw as I was driving out a steady stream of traffic oncoming, being directed by attendants into lines on the spacious field.  It seemed many people from elsewhere had gotten wind of this festival……with its flying sea life also a feature alongside exploding daffodils.