Downtown Event Hot

Downtown Event Hot -

Downtown event hot

By ELLYN COUVILLION
Livingston-Tangipahoa writer
Published: Aug 21, 2008 - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

HAMMOND - The rain that fell on the afternoon of Aug. 15, couldn’t have come at a better time for the crowds that turned out for the Hot August Night downtown event.

It cooled the temperature down nicely this year — but the event remains “hot” nonetheless.

Terry Lynn Smith, the Downtown Development District’s executive director, was expecting 4,000 to 5,000 people to come and enjoy the shopping, wine-tasting, music and good food in the event promoting downtown.

A “Chillin’ With the Chamber” event, held in conjunction with Hot August Night, is the Chamber’s biggest fundraiser of the year, said Charlotte Lenoir, executive director of the Hammond Chamber of Commerce.

Early on Friday, 300 tickets — at $100 each - they admitted two people — had been sold for music and dinner at the Chamber event on N.W. Railroad Avenue, Lenoir said.

This was Hot August Night’s 13th year, but there didn’t appear to be anything unlucky about it.

“Our merchants are special, our restaurants are great,” and the Downtown Development District wants everyone to know about it, Smith said.

“It’s an opportunity for our merchants to take advantage of something going on in the heat of the summer,” which is traditionally a slow time for retail, Smith said.

One retailer who appreciated the chance to shine on the occasion was Megan Maddry, owner of the new Imagine Boutique on North Cate Street.

Her shop, with fashions and accessories for women, from their college days to career days, is so new, in fact, that she opened its doors for business, for the first time, during Hot August Night.

A more official grand opening will follow at a later day, Maddry said.

“I worked in several of the boutiques around here; I fell in love with the whole area,” Maddry said of downtown Hammond.

She was familiar with the Hot August Night experience and “thought it would be the perfect time to open.”

Her shop was one of the 35 downtown merchants participating in a wine-tasting for guests, as well.

The evening wouldn’t have been complete without music, and there was a wide variety of it, from jazz to brass to Scottish.

K.C. King of New Orleans strode through the streets in a blue and green Ferguson tartan kilt, before the band he plays with, the New Orleans Strathspey & Reel Society, struck up its Scottish tunes at the Keith Davis Violin Shop.

This year is the band’s second to participate in Hot August Night, King said.

“It’s just a wonderful event,” King said of the evening.

Over in the Post Office parking lot, at the corner of West Thomas Street and Northwest Railroad Avenue, the Fire Mates, an organization of the wives and friends of the Hammond Fire Department firefighters, were selling jambalaya, soft drinks, cookies and cupcakes.

The appetizing aroma of the jambalaya could be picked up for a long way off, though, drawing hungry visitors to the spot.

David Atkins, one of the city’s firefighters, prepared the main course.

“He’s famous for his jambalaya,” Cindy Stilley, one of the Fire Mates, said.

“We sold over 300 bowls last year,” Stilley said.

Funds raised at the event go to help the firefighters and the community, she said.

Inside the family-owned Central Drugs store on East Thomas Streets, visitors could enjoy a sip of wine — or buy some cool lemonade to support the Hammond High soccer team.

They could also watch wood carver Jim Davis at work.

Davis was working on robust little egg-shaped Santa figures and had brought along some of his intricate “gnome houses,” with doors and windows and decorative touches in fascinating detail.

“Last year was really a great night for me,” Davis said early in the evening on Friday of last year’s Hot August Night.

He said he ended up selling two of his large wood carvings that night.

The downtown merchants would have been pleased to hear that for shoppers Edgie and Charles Alford, the evening was turning out to be a wonderful, first-time experience.

“We live right here in Hammond and don’t come downtown,” Edgie said.

“They have a lot of new shops, new stores. This gives us a chance to walk all the way through. I did not realize they had so many places,” she said.

“It’s lovely, lovely,” her husband, Charles, said, looking about him at the downtown shops.



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