This year’s Mineola Street Fair will feature more entertainment than it has in past years, with three stages set up to accommodate musicians and dance groups.
Tony Lubrano, Mineola Chamber of Commerce vice president and co-chair for the fair, said musical acts will include Eagles tribute band The Long Run, teen rock band Faded Skies, the WolfCats folk/rock band, Big Daddy and the Bulldog Blues, Lady Laura singing classic soul music tunes, inspirational keyboard composer Nicholas Duong and Andrew Anton and Jeremy Villas singing standards.
Dance groups will include Dance Dynamics of Mineola, Tahilla Dance Ministry, Irish American Step Dancers and Dance Treatment Zumba.
“It looks like we have a really full schedule,” Lubrano said.
This year’s street fair is expected by its organizers to build on the fair’s success the past two years as a festival staged in the village’s downtown and focused on local businesses.
“We’re trying to get all the businesses in Mineola. It costs them nothing. So we’re hoping to get them all into the fair,” Lubrano said.
Lubrano and Steve Ford, the chamber’s other co-chair for the Sept. 8 event, said they are both hoping to expand this year’s fair beyond the 124 vendors who participated last year.
Lubrano owns Piccola Bussola on Jericho Turnpike. Ford, also a vice president of the Mineola Chamber of Commerce, is co-owner of Willis Hobbies on Willis Avenue.
“Every year it seems to have gotten a little bit better. We’re very happy with the upward trend,” Lubrano said of the fair, which is sponsored by the Mineola Chamber of Commerce.
He said he expects most of last year’s vendors to be returning for the fair, which was relocated from Mineola Memorial Park three years ago and moved from a Saturday to a Sunday.
Lubrano said that when the fair was in the park on Saturdays, most of the vendors were from outside the village who came to sell T-shirts, and arts and crafts. Virtually of the local businesses, he said, were open on Saturday.
He said since the Mineola Chamber of Commerce successfully petitioned the Mineola Village Board of Trustees to change the venue to downtown Mineola and switched to Sundays, it’s been increasingly easier to draw local businesses into participating, Lubrano and Ford said.
“Our real focus as the chamber of commerce is to make this about Mineola and Mineola businesses. It’s become a great community event,” Lubrano said.
Lubrano said local restaurants along Mineola Boulevard will have outdoor cafes as in the past two years.
The fair runs from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., along 2nd Street, between Main Street and Mineola Boulevard and two blocks of Mineola Boulevard, north of 2nd Street.
Ford said many of the same entertainers are expected to be back for this year’s fair. That would include local songstress Michelle Ferreira, dancers and musicians of the Mineola Portuguese Society, Irish step dancers and performers from the Dance Dynamics studio.
“We are still working on the entertainment schedule,” Ford said.
Ford said inflatable rides for kids will be in the mix again this year and some arcade games may also be part of the street fair scene.
Lubrano said Winthrop-University Hospital will once more have a booth offering free blood pressure screenings. Lubrano said a petting zoo – a popular feature at last year’s fair – will likely be in the fair again.
Local businesses are signing up at a brisk pace, according to Ford, who said many vendors are last-minute participants who await the weather forecast for the day.
A rain date is set for Sept. 15.
