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Isabella Gaydos

mainstct_9525

It's now time for Main Street, Connecticut, a chance to showcase our local towns and cities and the things they have to offer. This week we are in Norwalk, and yeah, it's time for the big oyster festival. News 12 Connecticut's Mark Sudall is at Vets Park. Everybody there getting ready for opening night later on, Mark, it must be a busy place, or is it still kind of quiet? Oh, it's, it's getting exciting around here. You're 47, if you can believe it or not. The great Mike Riley, chair of the Norwalk Oyster Festival, joins us. Thank you so much. Thank you very much. Good morning. You've been here for what, almost 3 weeks now getting all this set up. Building the world, yeah, how many, I mean, how many volunteers does it take to make this happen? Well, we have thousands of volunteers and it's really about 1000, 1200 people put this thing together and we start planning the day after this festival. We start working on next year and you get the stage here. We got the stage here. We're getting ready for a great weekend and we're very excited. Really it's going to be a great weekend. And we get great entertainment, you know, it's all about Sheffield La Lighthouse like we were talking about before, you know, the Sheffield Lane Lighthouse is owned by the Norwalk Seaport Association. We put this event on. This is our number one fundraiser, so we do this to raise money to take care of our beautiful Sheffield On Lighthouse and raise money for education programs, get thousands of kids out there, you know, every summer like we were discussing before. This is what we do. For right, right, this is what it's all about. And let's hope. I mean, you know, you, you've gotten, uh, tens of thousands of people coming, so we're waiting on a lot of guests. Yeah, we're excited for a great Friday. The weather's gonna be beautiful and, and, uh, smoking wise Guy barbecue has been, you know, we're poking the fire since 4 in the morning. We might have to get over there and check that out. That's really cool stuff, 1000 pounds of. Meat, I mean, they're ready. 4 in the morning you got to give those guys credit. I mean, you got to give them credit getting up that early, but you know it takes a while to smoke all this meat, like 8 or 12 hours, right? That's why they have to be here at 4 in the morning. Well, Mike has been nice enough, of course he's staying here on the property, I guess, but he's been nice enough to hang out with us for a few more hours. We're going to check back in with you, Becky, coming up in our next hour. OK, well, I expect to see a smoking wise guy, Mark.

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mainstct_2_9525_2025-09-05-07-12-04

Well, it's time for Main Street, Connecticut, a chance to showcase our local towns and cities and the things they have to offer. Uh, this week we are in Norwalk. It's time for the big oyster festival. News trial Connecticut's Mark Sudall is at Vets Park for us, where everybody's getting ready for opening night, Mark. Oh yeah, opening night tonight, Becky. They're putting the final touches on everything. I want to introduce you to Mike Riley. He's the chair of the Norwalk Oyster Festival. Rick McQua is the president of the Oyster Festival. Tell us about the hours. When you be tonight we get going 6 to 11. Tomorrow 11 to 11. And then on Sunday, Kid's Day, all kids are free with an adult ticket is 11 to 8. And what's admission for folks? Uh, for adults it's 15 again, free on Sunday for adults, for kids, but, uh, yeah, and we're and you got a special deal going on here. So this year, um, our new title sponsors, Mohican Sun Casino, we're very excited to have them on board and this is, uh, almost complete. We're waiting on more furniture, but this is gonna be the VIP world. So you get to hang out here. Um, food is included from all the famous chefs at Mohegan. Some adult beverages, and admission to the oyster festival is also included. So if you want to be a VIP and party like a rock star, this is the place. And you have other food vendors. Oh yeah, this year we have about 40 food booths, um, which is really the most we ever had. And there's food from all over the world. Gee, that's crazy and great entertainment, and again, we're here for Sheffield and Lighthouse. That's what it's about raising money for Sheffield Lighthouse. So, so you told us about, um, two interesting, uh, entertainment acts you have over here. Tell us about those. So we have the Ready, uh, Ready Go dog show, which is amazing. It's a 45,000 gallon swimming pool. I only know that because we had to fill it with 3 tractor trailers, but anyways, these guys, it's the best dog show in North America, and they have these dogs that do these amazing jumps and great things, and they're rescue. And it's really fantastic. And then we have the Paul Bunyan lumberjack show that we had a number of years ago and now they're world champion lumberjacks. Wow, that's cool. So it's really cool. And that will be all weekend as well. And then, you know, on main stage we got unbelievable entertainment. All right, Mike, we're gonna catch up with you again in the next hour. Rick, thanks for stopping by and uh we'll see you again in our next hour. All right, look forward to it, Mark. Thank you.

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News 12 is checking out all the carnival rides, games and food at this year's carnival.

Main Street Connecticut: Showcasing the Norwalk Oyster Festival

News 12 is checking out all the carnival rides, games and food at this year's carnival.

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