What: Vancouver Sausage Fest, with food, carnival rides, beer garden, arts and crafts, entertainment and bingo.
Where: 6500 Highland Drive, Vancouver.
When: 5 to 11 p.m. Friday, Sept. 5; 10:30 a.m. to 11 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 6; 10:30 a.m. to 8 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 7.
Cost: $2, or $1 with a donation of nonperishable food for the Vancouver Fire Department Christmas Food Drive.
Information: vancouversausagefest.com
After 43 years, it’s finally time to say so long, farewell, auf Wiener-sehen and goodbye to the Vancouver Sausage Fest.
What: Vancouver Sausage Fest, with food, carnival rides, beer garden, arts and crafts, entertainment and bingo.
Where: 6500 Highland Drive, Vancouver.
When: 5 to 11 p.m. Friday, Sept. 5; 10:30 a.m. to 11 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 6; 10:30 a.m. to 8 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 7.
Cost: $2, or $1 with a donation of nonperishable food for the Vancouver Fire Department Christmas Food Drive.
Information: <a href="http://vancouversausagefest.com">vancouversausagefest.com</a>
The festival, a fundraiser for St. Joseph Catholic School, brings back happy nostalgia for many who grew up in Clark County, but its time has passed, said Courtney Givens, the event manager.
“When it began, it used to be one of the only games in town, that and the Clark County Fair, but Vancouver has grown exponentially since then,” Givens said. “The festival really hasn’t changed to keep up with that.”
The festival’s final sizzle boasts three — yes three — types of sausage this year, as opposed to the single sausage type that had become a hallmark of the event.
“There was actually one other year when we had more than one type of sausage, but when the committee evaluated that year, it didn’t really carry on,” Givens said.
The vast cornucopia of sausages will be a spicy hot link, a classic German bratwurst and a link made of smoked chicken, sun-dried tomato and basil, she added.
Also on the agenda is a special sausage-shaped time capsule that will be filled with items from those attending the final fest.
“We’re encouraging the public to bring a picture, a memory they’ve written down, and we’ll bury all that and then re-open it in 2050,” Givens said.
There will also be Friday and Saturday family movie nights, with screenings of “The Goonies” and “The LEGO Movie,” respectively. And there will be some low-key musical entertainment in the beer garden, she said.
“It will be acoustic bands, small bands, because we want to keep the noise down,” Givens said.
The festival in recent years has drawn between 25,000 and 30,000 people through the weekend. In its heyday it drew 100,000 or more. It was once a big money maker for the school, but it wasn’t really keeping up with the need, Givens said.
For the final event, organizers are expecting a somewhat larger crowd of 35,000 to 40,000 because of the nostalgia factor, she said.
The festival started in 1972 when, because of diminishing funds, the parish’s priest grew concerned that he would have to get rid of the school’s seventh- and eighth-grade classes. Parish members got together and created the fundraising festival as a way to keep them going.
About 8,000 to 9,000 people showed up in the first year, which was enough for the school to save the two grades. And for many years, it grew and expanded.
At one point, when Gene Munson was chairman, the festival brought in about $100,000 a year. But that number had dropped to a little over a quarter of that in recent years, said Munson, who co-founded the event.
“Years ago we had to buy sausage by the ton, not by the pound,” Munson said. “We had three tons of sausage some years.”
Munson, 89, still volunteers every year at the festival.
Nostalgia aside, he agrees that it’s time for something new.
“It has aged,” Munson said. “I wasn’t surprised when they said they were going to close it.”
His top choice for a replacement would be an international food festival put together by the many nationalities represented at the church and school.
The church has many people from all over the world, Munson said, and “it would be nice to see an event with the foods of those countries.”
Givens said the school and parish are considering several options for a replacement.
“There is a committee that is putting their heads together for what to do next,” Givens said. “A lot of people, hearing that this is the last year, are lamenting that. We actually have people coming in from many states for it.”
The replacement event will likely be smaller and more focused on the school and parish community, she added.
“We’ve had talk of an alumni night with sausage and a beer garden, sort of low key and one day,” Givens said. “And we’ve been talking about what to do with all the equipment and booths that we have, because we won’t need it anymore.”
