Saturday July 14, 2012

North Adams Transcript

NORTH ADAMS -- On one of the hottest days this summer, families flocked to Eagle Street Beach.

Veronica Bosley, director of tourism and community events for the city, said Friday evening that over 1,000 people attended the 14th annual Eagle Street Beach Party on Friday afternoon.

"It’s a big thing. It’s something my office gets calls about from people who are planning to visit the area and want to know when it is so they don’t miss it," she said.

For the most part, the city’s involvement in the event revolves around logistics, which include spreading, and later removing, 250,000 pounds of sand on Eagle Street, she said. The sand is donated by Specialty Minerals in Adams.

Eric Rudd, who began the beach party in 1999 as a community sculpture, said this year’s event was "very successful," and a lot of people came prepared with pails and shovels.

"It’s great to see families and kids play in the sand in downtown North Adams. It’s also great to see some of the wild sculptures they make," he said.

Immanuel Brennan, 13, of North Adams, and his family have been coming to the beach party for three or four years.

"We come to get buried," he said, as he sat on Eagle Street covered in sand.

The beach party is a really fun event, and it’s a great opportunity to hang out and see a lot of sand castles, he said.

John Jacobbe, of

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Clarksburg, and his family have been coming to the beach party for years. In fact, his four-year-old daughter, Emma, had been looking forward to it for weeks, he said.

"We live three hours away from the beach, so it’s nice to have a day out here where we can make sand castles," he said. "It’s unique to turn a road you usually travel down into a beach."

Friday’s beach party was the first for Terri Winarski of Adams, who brought her two great-nephews, Max and Carson Morin.

"I had heard about it, and finally decided that this year I would go," she said.

The scope of the event was amazing, and it was wonderful the city could have such a great event for children, she said.

"It can’t get any better than this," she said.

Following the beach party, which ran from 3:30 to 6:30 p.m., a Mexican Fiesta was held for adults from 7 to 10 p.m.

Organizer Keith Bona, a board member of Develop North Adams, said Friday night that he expected anywhere from 200 to 400 people to attend the fiesta, which was in its third consecutive year.

He added that the feeling of sitting on the Eagle Street Beach isn’t that much different than sitting on a beach on Cape Cod.

"It’s just that ours is surrounded by buildings," he said.