Orange Street Fair Draws Crowds and Raises Funds

The city of Orange’s annual International Street Fair is expected to draw 800,000 people before it ends at 10 p.m. today, more than the 600,000 the event drew last year, organizers said.

“It is kind of funny watching people trying to find [parking] spots,” said Jake Goetz, who lives nearby, sipping from a can of beer before adding it to the small pile of empties between his cooler and his lawn chair. “I’ve seen the same car go back and forth tons of times. . . . The crowd just gets bigger every year. That makes it more fun. The more people, the better it is.”

For the most part, faithful fair-goers said, there was little new to the Orange Street Fair this year. But that familiarity is part of the draw. The core elements--food stands and beer tents, ethnic music and pop-rock bands--were there again, augmented by a wide array of booths hawking temporary tattoos, earrings, face-painting and advice for women with unplanned pregnancies, among other things.

“We did really good last night,” Ginger Banko of Orange’s Living Well Clinic said Saturday as a stream of people stopped to look at a display of plastic fetuses in various stages of development. “I think it’s because of the models and the brochures and the face-painting.”

For Lisa Eckman and her daughter, Clairese, 6, the continuity of the Street Fair allows them to make it an annual day trip. They drive from Corona and meet Eckman’s mother, who lives in Garden Grove.

For the most part, the public comes for the dancing and partying, petting zoo and craft booths. But for the organizers, the fair serves as a key fund-raiser for local nonprofit organizations that get the proceeds from food and drink stands staffed by their volunteers.

The best money, say those who know, is in the beer concessions. So those are rotated on an annual basis.

Last year, Bob Saucedo, 50, sold beer to raise money for La Purisima Catholic school in Orange, where two of his kids attend classes. This year, the fourth year the school has staffed a booth, the school drew the sausage straw, Saucedo said.

“Things are going pretty good,” Saucedo said as students and parents cooked and filled orders, a cool breeze dissipating the blue plumes of grill smoke. “The first year we did food, we made about $3,000. The following year we had the beer booth. We made about $15,000. . . . The money is definitely in the beer.”