{"id":167802,"date":"2023-07-10T03:41:33","date_gmt":"2023-07-10T08:41:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/?p=167802"},"modified":"2023-07-11T03:51:54","modified_gmt":"2023-07-11T08:51:54","slug":"block-party-draws-large-crowd-with-food-music-and-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/2023\/07\/10\/block-party-draws-large-crowd-with-food-music-and-more\/","title":{"rendered":"Annual Block Party draws large crowd"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

SCOTT TRUXELL\/<\/strong>independent editor<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite some morning rain, Main Street Van Wert\u2019s Block Party went off without a hitch on Saturday. Much of the event was held along Central Avenue and it attracted a steady stream of visitors of all ages during the late afternoon and evening hours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe were in contact with (Van Wert County EMA Director) Rick McCoy all week, trying to keep our finger on the pulse and find out what\u2019s going on with the weather,\u201d Main Street Van Wert Executive Director Joe Dray said. \u201cOnce the rain moved through this morning we were really happy because it only set us back a little bit on our stage setup and that sort of thing. We\u2019ve really had very few hiccups compared to last year and attendance seems to be where it was last year too.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
The Krazy Neyberz Band entertained the crowd at Saturday’s MSVW Block Party. Bob Barnes\/Van Wert independent<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The Block Party, which ran from 4 p.m. to midnight, featured a number of different food trucks, vendors, a kids fun zone, a DJ, live high energy music by the Fort Wayne-based \u201cKrazy Neyberz Band,\u201d a cornhole tournament and the popular Duck Egg Race along Town Creek.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere\u2019s always talks about how can we do things better, how can we improve on what we\u2019re already doing,\u201d Dray explained. \u201cOne of the things we heard last year was \u2018we want more food trucks\u2019 so we have a lot more food trucks this year. We added a DJ and a photo booth and we have more market vendors this year\u2026we have new things and new ideas that we\u2019re trying out.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOnce this is over we\u2019ll go back and find out what worked and what didn\u2019t and we\u2019ll try to improve on it and grow, but we\u2019re starting to get to the point where we\u2019re going to run out of room,\u201d he added. \u201cWe may have to look to expand physically a little bit more.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Duck Egg Race involved hundreds of numbered ping pong balls being dropped into Town Creek. The first one to cross the finish line was the winner and that ball happened to belong to Chris Wannemacher, who was awarded the $1,000 grand prize.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Van Wert Freedom Cruise was also part of the Block Party.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe come together and it makes one really big event and we\u2019re always looking for partners and people we can partner with to make our event bigger or better or add more value to it,\u201d Dray said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The next downtown event offered by Main Street Van Wert will be Farm to Table at 7 p.m. Saturday, August 5. More information is available at https:\/\/www.mainstreetvanwert.org\/farm-to-table.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SCOTT TRUXELL\/independent editor Despite some morning rain, Main Street Van Wert\u2019s Block Party went off without a hitch on Saturday. Much of the event was held along Central Avenue and it attracted a steady stream of visitors of all ages during the late afternoon and evening hours. \u201cWe were in contact with (Van Wert County […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-167802","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-26 02:05:38","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167802","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=167802"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167802\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":167859,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167802\/revisions\/167859"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=167802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=167802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=167802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}