Balloon Man and Friends (click for larger image)

One of the things that makes St. Petersburg a great place to live is that we have ’big city’ amenities, but we still manage to hold onto some of the old small town flavor of yesteryear.   Today’s post is a good example of this concept.

Last Saturday, in our neighborhood, we had our third annual neighborhood block party.  The party was officially sponsored by our Neighborhood Crime Watch, and, to be sure, there were some crime watch themes running through the party.  But, beyond that, it was just a fun social event for the neighborhood, one that was a very nice step back in time.  Neighbors from an area of several blocks converged on one closed-off block for a few hours to enjoy a variety of activities and to catch up with friends.

Saturday was a perfect day for the block party – skies were blue and the humidity was low and there was a nice breeze that kept things reasonably cool.  And another thing that the breeze did was to spread the delicious aroma of the pulled pork barbeque that was being cooked up in the center of the block!  Pulled pork, hot dogs, baked beans, pasta salad, chips, cookies – there was a veritable feast available for anyone who wanted it!

Mayor-Elect Bill Foster (click for larger image)

Activities, in addition to just visiting and catching up with friends, included, among other things, a balloon man who not only made great balloon creations, he also cracked jokes constantly and he even did some of his balloon craft while riding a skateboard!  There was a live three piece band, making music through the afternoon to keep everybody’s feet moving.   There was a table set up to do face painting for the kids (and for any adults brave enough to submit to the will of the artist).  There was a pony hanging around a large empty lot, giving pony rides to anyone who was small enough to fit.  And there was a great demo given by the St. Petersburg Police K-9 unit that was fun to see.

We had a visit from a few of the city’s Crime Watch Police coordinators.  And we had a visit from our new Mayor-Elect, Bill Foster!

The party ran from 1:00 until about 4:00 – one of the later events for kids was a pinata-bashing, which yielded lots of candy and other goodies as the legs broke apart and the bedraggled creature gave up its treasure.

It was a fun afternoon in the neighborhood and it made it feel good to live here in St Petersburg…

Watching the K-9 Demo (click for larger image)

All That Remained... (click for larger image)