Festival season will get an unofficial kickoff with the 33rd Annual Old Village of Great Neck Street Fair on May 1 from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Middle Neck Road from Fairview Avenue to Arrandale Avenue, with a rain date of May 15.
“It’s an exciting day,” said Village of Great Neck Deputy Mayor Mitchell Beckerman. “It brings the community together. You meet your neighbors in the street. It’s just a fun day for all, both on the peninsula and off.”
With 150 vendors and 30,000 to 50,000 people expected to attend, it is one of the largest craft fairs around, Beckerman said.
The Village of Great Neck is sponsoring the fair in conjunction with the Great Neck Park District, which will provide a rock climbing wall on the Village Green. Also on the Village Green will be free pony rides and a petting zoo.
“We have wonderful vendors for the grown-ups,” he said. “We also have an number of our nonprofit vendors who are out promoting their charitable causes in the community.”
Expect “tons” of food, including fair staples like barbecue, gyros, peppers and sausage, kettle corn, ice cream, ices and smoothies, said Eileen Sternkopf from Showtiques Crafts Inc., the fair’s promoter. Specialty food items like pickles and seafood will also be available.
“Every kind of food that you can really think of we have,” she said.
Great Neck residents who know and love the street fair will be relieved to find this things mostly unchanged.
“Everything is pretty much the same every year,” she said. “The only thing is we’ve gotten quite a few new vendors. They are selling pretty much the same stuff, but these are new.”
Expect sand art for the kids, and jewelry, floral arrangements, woodwork and pottery for sale.
Famous woodworker Harry Glaubach will be peddling his vintage New York inspired wares. In his 80s, the Brooklyn-raised artist once worked alongside pop artists Andy Warhol and Peter Max, Sternkopf said.
“He had a piece on the Antiques Roadshow that he made in the 1960s,” she said. “It sold for $24,000.”
