Camarillo Takes It to the Street at Festival

It’s the one time of the year when Camarillo the suburb looks more like Camarillo the small town.

Drawing hundreds of locals and visitors Sunday, the Camarillo Fiesta and Street Fair was a chance for neighbor to see neighbor and for Ventura Boulevard to feel like a bustling small town--granted, one studded with amusement park rides and food booths.

In a city bisected by a freeway, this is when residents feel the most like a community.

“We’ve just lived here forever and we wanted to see everybody,” said Shelly Giacopuzzi, who came with her teenage son Keith. “You come to something like this and Camarillo doesn’t seem so huge.”

The sunny, warm street included a line of vendors hawking snow cones, coconut drinks and temporary tattoos. A giant inflatable dinosaur oversaw the festivities. The Ferris wheel turned, the Tilt-a-Whirl whirled, and the Zipper ripped.

And for five dollars, the brave strapped themselves into a rubber-band contraption and bounced themselves from a trampoline.

“It was pretty wild,” said Kelsey Lewis, a Thousand Oaks resident. “I felt like I could be a gymnast.”

She thought it wise to wait until after her trip on the trampoline to eat. But it was clear that the other event of the day was scarfing down goodies.

Standing in the center of the festival, Rhonda Wharton held a plate topped with a leaning tower of funnel cakes. Festooned with whipped cream and dollops of five different kinds of fruit, the cakes attracted their fair share of admirers interested in acquiring their own.

It was Wharton’s time off from staffing Buena High School’s funnel cake booth, but her treat served as an advertisement.

“This is mine,” said Wharton, of Ventura, whose daughter attends Buena High. “I’m taking a break, and showing it off at the same time.”

The festival also provided a chance to advertise the city’s renovated downtown, which was recently outfitted with brightly colored flowers dotting an expanded boardwalk with Victorian street lamps.

“This is going to show people we have a nice, redone kind of Main Street,” said lifelong resident Melissa Drummond, who walked the festival with her teenage son.

But, for at least one person, Camarillo couldn’t muster the small-town feel.

“I’m from Somis,” said Ligia Velasquez. “This is the big city.”