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28  GUIDE TO YELLOW SPR INGS  |  2020 – 2021 By AUDREY HACKETT Canceled? Street Fair? Only a pandemic could halt Yellow Springs’ regionally famous festival of commerce, crafts and capers under (usually) blue skies. The COVID-19 pandemic, which began in Ohio during March, prompted the cancellation of two Street Fairs, June and October 2020. Since its start in the 1960s as a summer sidewalk sale through its current incarnation as a twice-annual blockbuster event, Street Fair has never before been canceled, as far as Karen Wintrow of the Yellow Springs Chamber of Com - merce is aware. The chamber took over organizing the event some years ago, building it into a major draw for visitors to Yellow Springs. Street Fair may be on hold for now, but no evocation of downtown Yellow Springs would be complete without it. Here, we reprint an edited ver - Yellow Springs Street Fair— Once more to the streets PHOTO: AARON ZAREMSKY Musician Tumust Allison from Dayton played a powerful sax during the 2016 Street Fair. sion of a story that first ran in the News just prior to the June 2016 Street Fair. * * * Love it or dread it, Street Fair is a Yellow Springs tradition. But newcomers to the village awaiting the return of the arts, crafts, music, food and beer extravaganza might not realize just how humble and home- grown the tradition is. According to YS News archives, Street Fair began in 1963, when shopkeepers on Xenia Avenue organized a summer sidewalk sale. According to Jo Dunphy, who has sold real estate in Yellow Springs since 1960, they put their wares out on tables and, later, set up in the street. Dunphy’s daugh- ter, Sheila Dunphy-Pallotta, remembers as a kid chalking lines on the street with her dad. It wasn’t called Street Fair then, and the sale was con- fined to shops fronting Xenia Avenue, plus a few vendors from outside the village. The open-air sale drew several hundred people then — a far cry from the crowds of up to 25,000 that the festival pulls in today. But those small begin- nings launched a Street Fair tradition that’s been unbroken for most of its nearly 60 years. Molly Lunde, co-owner of Asanda Imports, remembers a smaller, quainter event when she was growing up in the village in the 1980s. One of the highlights for her as a kid was buying — and using — silly string, she said. “I’m probably responsible for that clause in the contract,” she joked. The Street Fair guidelines for prospective vendors ban the sale of silly string, together with guns, knives and other threatening objects. But beyond the fun of the festival, Street Fair influ - enced Lunde in another, deeper way. “For me, it sparked the whole idea of entrepreneurial venture.” In her 20s, she trav- eled regularly to Asia to do yoga, bringing back “a small bag of beautiful things” to sell at Street Fair. The proceeds would fund her next trip to Asia. After several years selling at Street Fair and Day- ton’s Second Street Market, she and her now-husband, Lee Kibblewhite, rented space downtown; in 2012, they bought, with another local couple, the building where Asanda is now located. “I definitely have nostalgia for street fairs of my youth, but I feel so supported as a business owner today [by Street Fair],” Lunde said, noting that the festival in its current form provides a “great infusion of funds” and attracts new customers to the business. Asanda is one of at least three downtown businesses that began as Street Fair booths, according to Karen Wintrow of the Yellow Springs Chamber of Com- merce, which organizes the semi-annual event. The other two are Twisted Tines (no longer in business in 2020) and Urban Handmade. Wintrow believes Street Fair plays a major role in sup- porting local businesses, as well as spreading awareness of local nonprofits that set up booths and also staff the beer garden and benefit from tips and a stipend. Other local nonprofits make thousands of dollars annually from handling parking for the event and col- lecting fees, she said. “I don’t know of very many downtown businesses [for which] Street Fair is not the best day of the year,” Win- trow said. “Infusing that kind of money into the commu- nity is a positive,” especially since much of the money comes from people outside Yellow Springs. Seventy percent of the Chamber of Commerce’s annual budget comes from Street Fair rev-