Those who ventured into downtown Roanoke last Saturday couldn’t complain that there wasn’t anything to keep them amused.
For starters the annual Harvest Festival in the City Market square meant additional vendors, live bluegrass music and shiny John Deere tractors for people to gawk at.
On Jefferson Street, the first ever Art in the Alley sidewalk exhibition brought several dozen local artists together, showing and selling their work in a parking lot for the Bundy Company building at Jefferson and Franklin.
Meanwhile, small groups of people in black t-shirts scurried around the downtown area, running up to doorways, looking in store windows. They were taking part in Fink’s third annual Diamond Dash, hoping to walk away with a $25,000 diamond prize. Contestants had to decipher clues delivered to their cell phones, going on sort of a scavenger hunt to answer questions posed to them. The contestants who answered the most questions correctly had a shot at the Fink’s diamond.
Just in case the daytime activities weren’t enough, Saturday afternoon the annual Big Lick Blues Festival cranked up at Elmwood Park, offering music and a rib contest for local blues aficionados, well into the night.
by Gene Marrano
