By Sunday, Church Street won’t look like it does now.
There will be tables set up along the sidewalks, with vendors passing out everything from plastic neon bracelets to political pamphlets. Farther down the street, across from the Freeman House, will be a stage where bands will play throughout the weekend. Behind the stage will be amusement rides, including a 63-foot Ferris wheel.
But why is Vienna’s historic district undergoing this transformation? For the annual Viva Vienna Festival, to which organizers are expecting over 25,000 visitors.
"VIVA VIENNA is a world apart from something like the Fairfax Fair," said Barbara Werner, owner of Church Street gift shop Black Eyed Susan. "[The Fairfax Fair] is so commercial, so glitzy. There is no sense of family like there is at Viva Vienna."
This year, for the first time, the Vienna festival will take place over a three-day period. In the past it has only been a two-day festival, with amusement rides open Saturday and both rides and vendor booths open Sunday. But this year the festivities will continue into Memorial Day on Monday, May 27. The expansion was made, in part, to appease the 140 vendors that will be attending.
"A lot of crafters said they would not come, they said it was not worth it to come from, say, Pennsylvania, for an eight-hour festival," said festival chair Woody Bentley. "But when we told them there would be two days for vendors, we got people from as far away as Florida and New Jersey. That has never happened before."
It rained at last year’s festival, which hurt sales for many vendors.
"That’s why the second day helps," Werner said. "If you have one day of foul weather, you get a second chance."
Werner is sponsoring booths for a group of local artists, all of whom sell work out of her shop. She grew up in Vienna, and remembers the early days of the festival. Over the years, she said, Viva Vienna has taken on a classier feel.
"I remember Viva Vienna being a lot more carnival-like, just rides, that kind of thing," Werner said. "Although they still have that, it’s not so much the feeling of a backyard festival."
RIDES ARE a large component of the festival, though, and Bentley said there will be an expanded number of rides this year. Amusement rides will open Saturday at 10 a.m., when police will barricade the stretch of Church Street between Mill Street and Dominion Road. On Sunday and Monday Church Street will be closed off from Mill Street to Lawyers Road.
Rene Altamirano is the manager of Great Harvest Bread Company, another Church Street business. He said the bakery will stay open on Sunday, to benefit from the festival crowd.
"It gets to be a zoo," Altamirano said. "There are so many people."