Labor Day Street Party
The Bolinas Community Center (BCC) has been organizing the annual Labor Day Street Party for over 40 years in Downtown Bolinas. We have gotten an official road closure from the County of Marin since the 1980s, from 11am-7pm. Our Labor Day Party is a big much-needed fundraiser for the community center, bringing in a big portion of our annual budget as well as being a much loved community event for the whole town. The actual event is Noon-6pm, but the County generally gives us the closure for an hour before and after the event due to set-up and break-down in the street.
Last year (2016), for the first time we had issues regarding our event, due to the road closure. A community member called the County and asked numerous other people to call and ask the county to not give us the Road Closure permit. This was all done directly with the County and nobody actually calling the BCC to find out the true details of the closure.
Every year we walk down Wharf Road and leave written letters at all the properties two weeks prior to our event notifying of the closure, as well as posting the info in the Bolinas Hearsay News. In hindsight now we realize that since numerous property owners might only be renting out their properties and not truly living in them, they might have not been getting the notifications we send – this is something for us to try and figure out and fix this year(!)
Thou we officially close the road we have always let every car leave Wharf Road during our event. If there have been people wanting to enter Wharf Rd., coming into town, we have asked cars to park at Mesa Park and take the shuttle down. BUT, if someone has needed to enter Wharf since they need to go to a house on Wharf, shop, are handicapped, or any other valid reason, we have always let cars come thru. We obviously haven’t advertised that, but have dealt with each situation accordingly.
Last year, we were letting cars come thru between songs which really didn’t work well for the event, music happening and people dancing in the street. We are planning to send out a schedule to all Wharf Residents this year explaining that we will ideally let cars thru only between band set changes, so cars could come thru every 15 minutes of each hour, while the bands are switching on the stage. In other words cars can come through 11:45-12 noon, then again at 12:45-1pm, 1:45-2pm and so on. We still hope most people will avoid having to drive in downtown and thus we will ask in our Hearsay letter etc. to avoid coming down if possible.
Please call (415) 868-2128 or email lia@bocenter.org or randi@bocenter.org with any questions or concerns.