Archive for Friday, May 28, 2010

The bluegrass band Ragweed is scheduled to play as part of Saturday’s Seventh Street Music Jam.

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The bluegrass band Ragweed is scheduled to play as part of Saturday’s Seventh Street Music Jam.

Organizers hope Music Jam in Steamboat attracts crowd

Memorial Day weekend also to feature Yampa River Festival, sidewalk sales

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— This weekend, visitors to downtown Steamboat Springs can peruse the sidewalk sale or get a discounted meal as part of Restaurant Week.

If that’s not enough, organizers of Saturday’s Seventh Street Music Jam hope live tunes entice even more visitors downtown.

Local musician Trevor G. Potter with Walt and the Old 37, local band Ragweed, and Bonjour Mom, winner of this year’s Teen Battle of the Bands, will perform between 11 a.m. and 5 p.m. on Seventh Street.

“We just wanted to have some entertainment downtown and give people another reason to come enjoy the day on Saturday (during) Memorial Day weekend,” said Zirkel Trading owner Steve Hitchcock, who is helping organize the event. “Certainly, all the restaurants, our neighbors, are having some good specials, and with sidewalk sales, there should be some good shopping.”

Hitchcock said Seventh Street merchants Urbane, Chez Nous and Ski Town Lifestyle Properties, in addition to Zirkel Trading, split the cost of the event.

Tracy Barnett, of Music Jam co-sponsor Mainstreet Steamboat Springs, said the Lincoln Avenue construction, economic slump and mud season have contributed to fewer downtown patrons, but those factors aren’t keeping everyone away.

“There are people who have said they just don’t come downtown because of the construction,” she said. “People who don’t have to come downtown aren’t coming downtown. But I’ve also heard from people who say, ‘We want to help our friends and neighbors, so we’re going downtown even if we don’t need anything.’”

Barnett said one downtown business actually reported a better April than last year. Barnett said she also is encouraged by calls she has received from Denver residents inquiring about Restaurant Week.

In addition to the Music Jam and other events this weekend, Barnett said the Yampa River Festival, which runs today through Monday, should entice more people to head downtown.

Hitchcock recommended that anyone who plans to stay for the Music Jam bring a chair.

He said this isn’t the first time there’s been live music for a sidewalk sale. In the past, Hitchcock said, it created a “community feeling in the heart of downtown.”

“We have done live music during sidewalk sales a couple of times and have found that it attracts people,” he said. “They get their toes tapping and enjoy things.”

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