Colleen Weibel of Yorkville and her family look forward to the Labor Day weekend each year, which always includes a visit to the city’s annual Hometown Days Festival.
“If it’s the Labor Day weekend we have to do this,” Weibel said as she and her family were about to enter the fest at Beecher Community Park in Yorkville on Friday night. “The kids look forward to this every year. This is probably the seventh time we’ve come and the kids love the carnival rides, the fun house and always the music. They always have some good bands here.”
The city of Yorkville is once again celebrating the Labor Day weekend with its 33rd annual Hometown Days Festival, which opened on Thursday and runs through Sunday.
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Organizers said the festival normally reaches somewhere between 30,000 and 35,000 visitors who come to see a wide variety of bands, as well as enjoy carnival rides, plenty of food trucks, a baby contest, bags tournament, car show and the always popular Ultimate Air Dogs competition.
Shay Remus, superintendent of recreation for the Yorkville Parks and Recreation Department, said that this year’s fest also “features over 80 different businesses and vendors and volunteer groups that come from Yorkville to support this event.”
“It’s a great culmination of everything that’s amazing about Yorkville and we’re excited to share that with our community,” she said. “We hold this for four days because the community keeps coming out. We’ve not seen a dip in attendance and but people keep coming on Labor Day weekend. People want to get out and have some fun.”
Sunday features a new event called the Cox Car Wash Speedway Challenge where kids will be riding in electric cars on a grass race track, organizers said.
Brianna Klein of Yorkville and her family on Friday said it was their first time at the festival “as we just moved to Yorkville two years ago.”
“We used to go to PrairieFest in Oswego and we looked this up and realized they have sort of the same thing here,” she said. “We kind of want to bring the kids one night and maybe check out another night ourselves – just me and my husband. We’re going to do the rides but given the heat, the kids are going to need a lemonade shake-up.”
Brianna’s husband Jack Klein said a hometown festival brings a community together.
“I know people meet friends and neighbors at things like this, and we’re looking forward to seeing the people our kids play ball with and so forth,” he said.
David Sharos is a freelance reporter for The Beacon-News.
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