On October 7th, 2023, the Sterling Community Center celebrated their 35th annual festival. It was a cold and windy day with bright red leaves falling all around our neighborhood. I walked outside with no jacket, assuming that I would be fine without it. Mo and I met up nearby, ordered an Uber, and arrived at the Sterling Community Center. Fortunately, we looked at the weather an hour before leaving and brought an umbrella with us to shield us from the rain.
When we arrived at SterlingFest, we noticed shopkeepers and vendors setting up their tents. Sellers put their products and self-made trinkets on their tables, showing off their achievements and items. Due to the weather, many of the items were falling off of tables and some even had tent roofs flying with the wind. Most of the vendors tried covering their products to keep them from getting wet, then would quickly take them off again to show off what they were selling.
We walked around the festival, glancing at the items being sold. The streets were lined up with people selling jewelry (such as rings, earrings, bracelets, etc.) while others were selling crocheted plushies, keychains, and other little trinkets.
While walking around, we stood in front of a tent with crystal bracelets for sale. I admired the jewelry, trying to figure out which one I would treasure the most–I wanted to buy something that would be meaningful to me. Despite being very indecisive in choosing, after some time, I ended up purchasing the Moon bracelet. The bracelet was about $19 and the main color theme is gray and white, representing the beauty of the monochrome celestial object with sprinkles of purple and light brown shades for a pop of color. The bracelet included crystals such as labradorite, howlite, chalcedony, mixed jaspers, and mixed agates. The Moon serves as an embodiment for wholeness, transformation, inspiration, wisdom, and emotional balance and clarity. You can purchase these crystal bracelets online at www.castein.co. Wear your stones and crystals with confidence.
Content with my purchase, we continued to look around to see what else the sellers had to offer to us. Two tents from the bracelet shop, there were stacks of plushies that attracted my attention. Even though I already decided I wouldn’t buy anything since I was already low on money, we saw Pikachu, Gengar, and Psyduck keychains which kept us near the tent. One of my favorite childhood memories was playing Pokémon at 3 in the morning, hiding my 3DS away from my mom. Mo ended up buying the Psyduck keychain for me, as Psyduck was already one of my bag accessories (from one of my other friends who went on a trip to NYC). Now, I have a bulky keychain, but it’s okay because it’s a Psyduck.
At this point, we had finished exploring the left side of the festival and decided to walk towards the right side. Since it was still early, a lot of the vendors weren’t done with setting up and some of them had not arrived yet. As we continued walking, we spotted a crochet shop that had different types of animals and holiday related items for sale. I remember seeing a dog, a piece of candy corn, an otter, and many others. The ones that caught my eye the most were a black cat inside of a pumpkin and a fall-themed axolotl. Personally, I am a dog person so feeling the need to purchase the cat-in-a-pumpkin was kind of funny, but all I can say is that it looks like Mo and I’m not upset that I have it now. The axolotl is a different story, he is miniature, but very soft and cuddly all at the same time. I like the design, being a lot of the items at SterlingFest were Halloween or autumn-themed. Mo, once again, bought both of these cuties for me, and I honestly can’t thank him enough, he lowkey spoils me.
But anyways, after purchasing the crocheted cat-in-a-pumpkin and the axolotl, we decided to stay in the Sterling Community Center, trying to find a place that was warm. We sat in the entrance room, looking at the pictures we took and noticed how bad the weather was becoming. Mo decided to walk out, sacrificing himself to the cold rain while I stayed in the entrance room. I pretty much spent a whole thirty minutes watching him struggle to take a picture of the weather and its impact on the festival. After staying idle in the entrance room, we decided to walk back outside and look at more shops even though the weather was getting worse.
Let’s just say that I deeply regretted not bringing a coat that day. It was still as cold as when we first arrived and Mo took out his umbrella, signaling me to hold it. We walked outside of the Sterling Community Center, avoiding the snails on the sidewalk. We couldn’t even walk five steps until the umbrella started blowing inside-out. By the way, we were struggling to keep the umbrella upright, occasionally stopping to make sure we didn’t get rained on. We eventually decided to run underneath one of the tents to keep ourselves from getting wet (which ultimately failed due to how bad the weather really was).
We talked briefly with the vendors, mutually complaining about the weather and how bad it was affecting the event. From their perspective, they had to put an extra layer of protection on their products to keep them from getting wet. In the pictures below, you are able to see how they tried to fix their tents and vendors covering their products.
We ran with our inside-out umbrella and took a break inside of Big Lots. We sat on one of the couches there for twenty minutes, trying to keep ourselves warm. The majority of the day, we just tried to not die from how cold and wet it was outside. Eventually, we dragged ourselves back outside. By that time, the weather got better. The rain turned into a drizzle, and we could finally walk outside without the worry of getting our equipment wet.
We walked towards the center of the festival, trying to see what type of food people were planning on selling. Unfortunately, most of the food vendors were not ready to serve food. A good majority of them had just arrived and were preparing to cook and sell. There were many types of food at the festival; there were people offering kabobs, desserts, fries, etc. but we focused on the people selling hamburgers and hot dogs.
Despite the terrible weather, I still enjoyed spending my time at SterlingFest. A not fun fact is that this was Mo’s first time being at SterlingFest, and while the weather wasn’t on our side that day, he expresses that he still had fun, and would definitely go again next year. Usually, with better weather, Park View Marching Band would participate every year in SterlingFest by doing their part in the parade, but due to the weather that day, Claude Legrand (Park View High School’s band director) had announced the cancellation of the event, and they were unable to perform in the 2023 SterlingFest Parade. Next year, hopefully there will be better weather for those who would want to go and participate/explore SterlingFest in 2024.
