After parade cancellation, Bellingham neighborhood hosts its first Chalk Festival

With the coronavirus pandemic canceling the traditional Fourth of July Bellingham Bay Rolling Parade Band in the Columbia neighborhood, art and community persevered with the Chalk Festival

Flip Breskin, who had attended the parade for years, said she considered it a staple for the community.

“[The parade] is the sweetest thing. I know there are hundreds of kids with bicycles and tricycles and parents with strollers and little red wagons,” she said. “The kids who are completely out of control, milling all over the place. The sense of trust that I saw the first time I went, I told myself, ‘I’m never missing’.”

But following the cancellation, Breskin couldn’t allow the neighborhood to go without some kind of celebration and show of community. So she got the idea to start an event called the Chalk Festival; an event where people could draw on the sidewalks in front of their homes and not violate COVID-19 social distancing recommendations.

“When it finally sank in that we don’t get to do that this year, I had to grieve,” Breskin said. “I sat there and cried and then it occurred to me. Gee, I wonder if we could do chalk around the park where it would have been?”

Originally, the idea was to chalk around the park where the parade would have been held, but concerns about people’s proximity to each other led to people chalking outside their homes instead.

“It feels like something we can do together without endangering anyone,” Breskin said. “And for me, that’s a very big deal. Some volunteers did the map for us, did the website where people can sign up and I have to approve them all. I check them to make sure that they’re actually people in the neighborhood.”

And the idea quickly caught on and took off. More than 180 households in the neighborhood registered to take part in the event, with Breskin spending around $600 dollars on communal chalk.

“I started looking for chalk and discovered that we have a nationwide shortage of sidewalk chalks this summer,” Breskin said. “I was in full panic mode, went searching, found chalk and just bought it. I got panicked and bought like 600 bucks of chalk.”

And despite her purchases, they barely had any leftover with so many people participating.

“I’m leaking tears,” Breskin said. “It’s really amazing. I never dreamed of something like this.”

And with the success this year brought, Breskin said that she fully expects a similar event to occur next year.

“I don’t see any possibility it won’t happen again,” she said. “Not only that, but other neighborhoods can have the platform and other communities can do their own version and we can help them do it with what we’ve learned.”

More information on the event and pictures from it can be found on the Columbia Neighborhood blog.