Spring Antique Festival set for Clinton next week
Market Street in downtown Clinton fills up with vendors, food trucks and visitors during the Clinch River antique festivals each spring and fall. (photo:G. Chambers Williams III )
In addition, the Norris Farmers Market cranks up for its new season beginning Wednesday, May 4.
The big May downtown event, the 17th-annual Spring Antique Fair, kicks off at noon on Friday of next week, and continues beginning at 10 a.m. Saturday.
It will include street vendors and food trucks on Market Street, along with a variety of activities and specials in most of the downtown stores.
This event is presented by The Antique Merchants Guild of Clinton in conjunction with the city of Clinton and Historic Downtown Clinton. There is no admission charge, and plenty of free parking is available in the city parking lot on Commerce Street.
“Antique vendors line [Market] street rain or shine with a beer garden and entertainment from Handsome and the Humbles on Friday evening,” the Facebook event page says.
Also, next week will see the opening of the Clinton Farmers Market on Thursday, May 5, in the Commerce Street parking lot. It will continue every Thursday from 3-6 p.m. until October. The weekly event was on Fridays last year.
The day before, on Wednesday, May 4, the Norris Farmers Market will open its season from 3-6 p.m. in downtown Norris, in front of the Norris Middle School and Lions Club Pavilion.
All of downtown loves to take part in the Spring Antique Fair, which kicks off the summer selling season for the downtown stores, and brings thousands of visitors – most of them from out of town – to Historic Downtown Clinton.
“Nobody does antiques quite like Clinton; just ask Martha Stewart!” says a post on the Historic Downtown Clinton website.
“And you can find the best of the best by coming to shop our stores and hundreds of vendors for two days this spring. We’ll also have food trucks and entertainment for the whole family to enjoy.”
Days and hours for the festival are Friday, May 6, from noon to 8 p.m., and Saturday, May 7, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. The event will be held “rain or shine.”
As for the Clinton Farmers Market, it will be celebrating its second year, after having been established just a year ago in cooperation with the East Tennessee Farm Association for Retail Marketing, also known as FARM; and the Chamber of Commerce. This year, the Historic Downtown Clinton group will be working with FARM to coordinate the farmers market.
Norris moved its farmers market from Thursdays to Wednesdays last year to make it more convenient to those who want to shop, said coordinator Mindy Wells.
Norris Middle School students get out at 1 p.m. Wednesdays, which means there is less school traffic in the area when the farmers market opens at 3 p.m.
“Our market has been much more focused on small farmers and backyard farmers,” Wells said earlier. “People who grow blueberries in their back yards. People who have gardens, but just have too much produce, or have a couple of beehives, so they have some honey to sell. These are people who aren’t necessarily farmers, but they do have things to offer.”