There are a lot of classic games during Petersburg’s 4th of July celebration – log rolling, the money pile, the egg toss. Nathan Lopez runs the main street events on the 3rd, hosted by the Lighthouse Church. He said some events do get changed from year to year.
“We had one year where we actually had pies with herring in it,” he said. “And then we realized that was a bad decision. I mean, I should have just already recognized that was a bad decision.”
Side note: the herring was raw.
“So it was kinda like this idea ‘Let’s do something funny, gross and local,’ and it was like- it was too gross and too local,” he laughed.
Lopez said there were long lines for the event, but despite the high participation rate, he nixed it the next year. Now the pie eating contest involves uncontroversial flavors.
But the festivities don’t start with the pie eating contest. That honor goes to the Parks and Rec Community Center open house from 4-6 p.m. on the 2nd – bounce houses, open swim, sumo wrestling, walley ball and racquetball, cake and hot dogs – all for free.
Then at 9 a.m. on the morning of the 3rd, there’s a 7k run around Petersburg’s loop, with the option to get doused in brightly colored cornstarch for some extra pizazz.
By 10 a.m. on the 3rd, food and vendor booths will be set up on main street. And by noon you can check out the classic car show downtown, compete in the herring toss, or get a drink at one of the beer gardens.
The Lighthouse Church Main Street events kick off in the early afternoon. Lopez said that while this year there won’t be any big changes to the games, he is still dialing in some details. Like with the first event – care will be taken with the watermelon slicing after some participants got an unfair advantage last year.
“We were getting inconsistency in size,” he explained.
The second event is the bubble gum blowing contest.
“There’s probably 60, 70 people out there on the street lined up, you know, chewin’ as fast as they can,” he said. “And so we tell them, we’re like, ‘Hey, the faster you chew, it’s all about breaking down the sugars, you’re gonna get a bigger bubble.’”
An army of volunteers stand by with calipers, ready to measure the bubbles.
Then there’s a rock-paper-scissors tournament. Lopez said it’s a little different this year too.
“Last year, we did a rock-paper-scissors challenge, and we did it for 4 to 8 year-olds – let me just tell you, that was a bad decision! They didn’t know what they’re doing,” he said.
This year the competition is for 9 to 12 year-olds.
That’s followed by a hot dog eating contest, and a five legged race, which requires four people per team, and lots of coordination and communication. And then there’s limbo. Lopez said this year there’s going to be a little bit more sand on the ground, to pad the falls of unsuccessful contestants.
If the limbo feels too safe, the next contest probably won’t – eating a Caroline Reaper, the hottest pepper in the world. The contest requires a waiver, and is only for adults.
“The winners we’ve had multiple years, it’s almost always surprising,” said Lopez. “You can’t look and say, ‘Ooh, that that person is gonna win.’ It’s always the person that’s very unassuming. They’re kind of off to the side, you know.”
Lopez said the prize for that event has gone up, from $100, to $150.
“I’ve had some people that won it, they said, ‘It wasn’t worth it!’” he said.
Then there’s a street dance, a patriotic costume contest, a hoop shoot contest, and finally, the pie eating contest. Without herring.
And then, of course, there’s the fireworks.They start at 11 p.m. the night of the 3rd, right when it’s just finally getting dark. Licensed pyrotechnician Dave Berg is joined by a whole pile of firefighters and other volunteers at Petersburg’s ballfield. They coordinate a 20 minute-long show, which includes something called the cremora – a homemade explosive made with coffee creamer, which creates a massive fireball. Berg is adamant that folks not try it at home.
The morning of the 4th, the parade kicks off the festivities. The theme this year? Star Spangled Spectacular. The parade is a competition and takes two laps through town. That’s so the judges have time to get a good look at the floats. Those judges are picked at random out of the crowd – but they have to be visitors, no locals allowed. Mindy Lopez and Stephanie Payne are on the 4th of July Committee. They said finding the judges is easy.
“We know who’s a visitor in this town,” laughed Lopez.
“Yeah, we can usually sniff that out,” agreed Payne.
Once the parade is over – Payne said even with two laps through town, that’s 16 minutes maximum – there’s a money pile behind First Bank and games at KFSK’s Kiddie Carnival.
The beer gardens open back up, and then Parks and Rec Mainstreet events kick off in the afternoon. 4th of July committee member Julie Anderson said the kids 50 yard dash is one of her favorites.
“The little kids running as fast as they can and not realizing they could run that fast or losing shoes that every year we have kids whose shoes just fly off,” she said.
But she also loves the slow bike race.
“The kid that’s just watching everybody behind them, and I’m like, ‘You’re not gonna make it dude,’”
There’s a water balloon toss for kids, and an egg toss for anyone thirteen and up. There’s a training wheel bike race and a trike race for kids – and a trike race for adults. That one involves another person standing on the back of a tricycle that has no real breaks, and goes quite fast.
And there’s the 2×6 stomp – a race where teams of four people wear size 13 Xtra tufts nailed to boards, and struggle to run in unison. Anderson said there’s a strategy.
It’s something where they find a cadence, you know, you get one team that they’re like, ‘Okay, left, right,’ and they start stomping before they get going,” she said.
The games end in the Harbor. There’s the two-person blindfolded rowboat race, which can sometimes test the limits of a pair’s communication. That’s followed by the log rolling competition. Susan Erickson helps organize the events. And she’s a long-time log rolling champ, along with her husband and children. She said she loves it when the two contestants are able to get the log really spinning and show off their abilities.
“It’s just really fun to watch, it’s like watching dancers, but they’re on logs,” she said.
Erickson encourages everyone to give it a shot – she said really, if you can walk a curb without falling off, you can log roll.
“That’s really all you need,” she said. “There’s no real skill involved. It’s just the ability to stay on the log for a little bit longer than someone else.”
And, she said, everyone once and awhile, people even manage to finish the log rolling competition without getting wet. But not very often.
More information and a schedule of events can be found on our website, kfsk.org.
