Salem prepares for back-to-back festivities this weekend

If you live in Salem or are just passing through this weekend, be ready for delays and alternate routes along Main Street downtown as Salem High School’s Homecoming Parade and the sprawling Olde Salem Days hit back to back.

The parade begins at 5:30 p.m. Friday and runs along Main from Shanks Street to College Avenue to Roanoke Boulevard to Texas Street and Salem Stadium. Roads will be closed from 5:15 to 6:30 p.m.

Main Street will be closed again starting at 7 a.m. Saturday from Chestnut Street/Lewis Avenue to Thompson Memorial Drive for the Olde Salem Days arts and crafts festival. The first block of all cross streets in that section also will be closed, along with Calhoun Street in front of the Salem Police Department. Roads will re-open about 7 p.m. Shuttle buses will ferry visitors between parking areas at the Salem Civic Center and Calhoun Street.

Olde Salem Days, in its 32nd year, typically draws about 300 arts and craft vendors, and features a food court in the farmers market area and an antique car show at the east end of the festival area.

Barney Horrell, director of the event, which benefits the Salem Rotary Club, said the number of vendors is up somewhat this year. That’s despite the event continuing its prohibition against political candidates or parties leasing vendor spaces and expanding it to community groups generally.

“It becomes a very slippery slope. There’s a lot of social political issues which have groups associated with them,” Horrell said. “We feel like we’re advertising to the crafters and to the patrons that this is an arts and crafts fair. … We’re trying to keep from in any way dividing the people who come to our event.”

Any of those groups are still free to distribute stickers, brochures, fliers or other materials as they walk the streets at the event, he noted.

Organizers also decided to do away with the festival’s beer garden. “It wasn’t a great fit,” Horrell said. It also didn’t do that much business. It s busiest times were years when there was a televised Virginia Tech football game and organizers set up a TV in the beer garden. Horrell said they didn’t want to compete with downtown businesses that also serve beer, like Mac and Bob’s and All Sports Cafe.

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