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A festival on the rise
By CHRISTINA HEADRICK
© St. Petersburg Times, CLEARWATER -- Several hundred people amble along Pier 60 on Clearwater Beach and browse stands set up by craft vendors selling an array of locally made goods: night lights made from shells, necklaces with shark teeth, watercolor paintings of beach sunsets.
In an adjacent beachfront park, tourists videotape a Cadillac-sized sea turtle being sculpted out of the sand. Others crowd around a stage to listen to a duo of guitarists play Jimmy Buffet and Beatles cover tunes. On weekends, the scene is even livelier, including performances from a stilt walker, juggler and fire eater. And the crowds are bigger as they gather at the city's pier from two hours before sunset to two hours afterward, assuming there is no rain. But weekday or weekend, every sunset is a reason to celebrate at Pier 60 on Clearwater Beach because of the Sunsets at Pier 60 Festival, which has grown dramatically during the past few years. Although no statistics are kept, several members of the non-profit organization that runs the free nightly festival guess that attendance has doubled during the past few years as the event has become better known. Now 1,500 to 5,000 people walk through the sunset festival each night, estimates Lisa Chandler, a board member of the Sunsets at Pier 60 Society Inc., whose husband, Steve, is the society's president. Craft vendors have followed the crowds to the pier. While the sunset festival began in 1995 with about a dozen craft vendors, now there are 40 to 60 artisans willing to come out nightly, Chandler said. They pay a $12 fee (rates rose from $9 this summer) for each night that they sell their wares, which must be handmade. That generates revenue to finance the live music that creates the ambiance for the festival, said Chandler, who also runs the city concession stand at the foot of the pier. The city of Clearwater helps fund the weekend live entertainment and pays for some advertising.
"I'd say that within the past year, we have probably seen a 100-percent increase, not only in the crafters who are participating but also in the daily attendance," Chandler said. "We're just overwhelmed. It's wall-to-wall people some nights." The festival's budget increased during the past few years from about $26,000 to $190,000 for 2001, Chandler said. Part of the jump is because as the festival grew, it added a spring Beach Fest two years ago that tries to recruit a nationally known music act. This year, Sunsets organizers finally had enough money to hire a part-time assistant to answer phone calls and do public relations and marketing. This summer, the festival developed an Internet site at www.sunsetsatpier60.com. In addition, efforts are under way to market the festival on other Web sites, in magazines that tourists receive in their hotel rooms throughout Florida and in the media. Last week, the festival was featured on Food Finds on the Food Network. "It's taken a long time to get to the status of where we're at," Chandler said. "But now we have something to offer that's a quality product. You can spend a good two hours there, watch the sunset and enjoy the entertainment."
When it was launched, Clearwater's festival was only Thursday through Sunday, and it had a difficult time establishing itself. Some beach residents derided it as the "flea market." "You used to be able to count the people who were here," said Margaret Kadziolka, who has sold jewelry made with ceramic and bone beads at Sunsets at Pier 60 since the beginning. In 1998, the festival became nightly, Chandler said. Along the way, the festival developed a few corny traditions. At sunset, the crafters whip out conch shells and blow them, a knockoff of what happens in Key West. Many vendors enjoy the atmosphere at the pier as much as the people strolling the festival. Some are former business people who preferred the Sunsets at Pier 60 lifestyle to their desk jobs. Kathy Hansen and her husband Bob sell exotic, miniature air plants growing in shells. "Bob always says this is the best office he ever had," she said. The retired Palm Harbor couple have had their homegrown business for a year and a half, and nuture plants on their lanai and all over their yard that eventually sell for $5 to $10. "This year, (the festival) has really grown," Hansen said. "We meet so many nice people from all over." As she spoke Tuesday, Charlene and Jim Ros, a couple from the Chicago area with their children Jayme, 9, and Matt, 17, were picking out air plants to take home. The family said the sunset festival gave them something to do that night after a day at Caladesi Island. Matt had bought a glass turtle key chain for his girlfriend, with a piece of rice inserted into the turtle with his and her names written on it. "Now they're forever bonded in rice," quipped Mr. Ros. At another nearby table, Gina and Rick Copenhauer, a Seminole couple, were smelling the homemade soaps of the Soap Sanctuary, Bradenton resident Pam Karasy's business. They asked Karasy about her soaps, including a top-selling blue soap called Clearwater Moon. The soap is made with coconut oil, avocado oil, olive oil, vitamin E and mango butter, among other ingredients, Karasy said. The Copenhauers said they had come to Pier 60 to celebrate one year of marriage. They went on their first date to a sunset festival. "Our first kiss was right over there at that little lifeguard stand," Mr. Copenhauer said. He put one arm around his wife and gave her a hug. All along the pier, craft vendors said it always surprises them how many locals don't know about the sunset festival. But Suzanne Boschen, a jeweler who has challenged some of the city's beach redevelopment ideas, said she thinks the festival is the best thing going on at the beach at night. "We're basically the entertainment on the beach," Boschen said. "And the entertainment is free. The atmosphere is festive. I think it helps other businesses out here." Festival organizers have recently met with city officials to discuss how to nurture Sunsets at Pier 60. Chandler said the group wants to make sure that the city doesn't cut its $41,800 budget for sunsets. The festival is already losing $10,000 in funding this year because its information kiosk, which local businesses pay to place brochures in, is to be replaced with a new city visitors center. Another issue is the city's intention to phase out civilian police aides who patrol the beach and sometimes assist at the sunset festival, doing things like helping a lost child find his parents, Chandler said. Festival organizers also would like the city to consider putting electrical outlets on Pier 60. Vendors now have to lug car batteries and various contraptions to light their stands. Kevin Dunbar, the city's parks and recreation director, said that he is willing to consider the electrical project, as long as the festival can demonstrate how the investment would help attract top artisans. Meanwhile, festival organizers and the city recently agreed to try to make advertising more seamless, emphasizing in every ad that the festival happens nightly. "Sunsets is one of the more pure things we do," Dunbar said. "You get people from the city who go down to the beach just for that." The festival is important to tourism here, said Carole Ketterhagen, executive director of the St. Petersburg/Clearwater Area Convention and Visitors Bureau. The bureau awarded the festival a $35,000 grant this year to develop Beach Fest and improve marketing activities. "I love the event," said Ketterhagen, who regularly directs travel writers to the festival. "Pier 60 is the perfect site for it, too. It's a natural gathering point. You have the ability to set up entertainment and room for vendors, and you have a playground. It's a great venue."
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