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The festival can ‘make people aware that we are a thriving community down here.’

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Cars won’t be welcome in Old Downtown Torrance for a few hours Saturday.

That’s when booths with blue awnings, long-distance runners, entertainers and visitors will be taking over for the Torrance Friendship Festival.

“We like to have the feeling of a family oriented hometown fair,” said Gary Meyer, festival chairman. The event, which drew 25,000 people last year, combines food and entertainment with fund raising for 100 nonprofit organizations and promotion of downtown merchants.

Visitors Saturday will be able to stroll down historic downtown streets--the heart of Torrance in the 1920s--munching on sandwiches and desserts sold by community organizations and browsing through displays of bonsai trees and handcrafted jewelry, quilts, wooden toys, clothing and other items for sale. Booths will offer puppet shows, face painting and a variety of games, including a chance to dunk a taunting target.

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Bands from Torrance high schools, square-dancers, barbershop quartet singers and Miss Torrance, singer Cheryl Anthony, will be on hand to entertain. And for those who like to take part in their own entertainment, the festival will offer Big Band, salsa, pop and oldies dance contests.

Those in the market for nostalgia may view ‘50s and ‘60s cars supplied by the South Bay Car Club and displays at the Torrance Historical Society Museum.

Early bird runners will have a chance to perform even before the festival begins, in the Torrance Police Department’s first-ever 5-K fun run. It starts at 8 a.m. at El Prado Park.

Sgt. Ron Traber said the department hopes the 3.1-mile run through Torrance streets will draw at least 600 people, from children to senior citizens. Proceeds from entry fees will support the Torrance DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) program, in which a uniformed officer teaches ways of saying no to drugs in the city’s middle schools and high schools. Runners may still register at 6:30 a.m. Saturday for a $12 fee.

Free rides on Torrance city buses will be offered Saturday between the Friendship Festival and a free Japanese-style Bunka-Sai Festival being held from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. at the Torrance Recreation Center, 3341 Torrance Blvd. This event, sponsored by the Torrance Sister City Assn., will continue Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Attractions include Japanese food, martial arts and calligraphy demonstrations, a tea ceremony, and Japanese dancing and music. Victor Kilburn, association president, said the event raises money for a student cultural exchange with Torrance’s sister city, Kashiwa, Japan. “It also communicates Japanese culture to the community,” he said.

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The downtown Friendship Festival was started three years ago “to make people aware that we are a thriving community down here,” said Meyer, co-owner of a 60-year-old jewelry store. Nonprofit organizations were brought into the festival so they could gain community recognition and raise money by selling food or conducting games.

This year, four Torrance Boy Scouts are helping with the festival as a public service project to earn credits toward their Eagle awards. The four--Joseph Fortunato Jr., Brian Snow, Dru Ashcraft and Kevin O’Dell--are doing such things as making signs for festival booths, distributing flyers, putting up directional signs for traffic control and recruiting festival volunteers.

“I knew it was going to be a pretty big project, but I didn’t think it would be this big,” said 16-year-old Fortunato, who--with the help of fellow troop members--has distributed thousands of flyers about the fair to 300 businesses, 17 elementary schools and six libraries.

Other Scout troops, PTAs, service clubs, school organizations and dozens of other Torrance nonprofit agencies also are getting ready.

“Our staff has been baking all week,” said Cathy Huber, director of the latchkey child-care program at the Torrance YWCA, one of the nonprofit agencies with a booth at the fair. Even the youngsters are helping prepare the peanut brittle, cupcakes and brownies to be sold.

“The festival is very significant to us because a lot of people don’t know we exist,” said Huber, whose agency provides after-school care for 60 young children who otherwise would be at home alone while their parents work.

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The money raised--$500 last year--is also important. “It buys sports equipment, jump ropes and games and pays for summer field trips,” she said. This year’s destinations are Disneyland and a water slide park in Irvine.

What: Torrance Friendship Festival.

When: Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Where: Old Downtown Torrance. (Bounded by Cravens, Post, Sartori and Marcelina avenues.)

Admission: Free.

Information: 540-5858.

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