It includes live music from the best local and national bands as well as Halloween-themed entertainment. The Ultimate Halloween Fest is a massive event, running on the weekends in September and October. Ultimate Halloween Fest (October 29–30, 2022) After the parade, visitors can stroll through craft booths, food vendors and listen to live music. The parade features floats, colorful decorations, music bands, and funny characters marching through the Highlands. The parade usually starts on Baxter Avenue and continues to Bardstown Road, in the heart of the Highlands neighborhood, the epicenter of Louisville's nightlife as well as bar and restaurant scene. Louisville Halloween Parade is the largest fall celebration in the city, which attracts over 45,000 attendees. Louisville Halloween Parade (October 29–30, 2022) The Jack-O-Lantern Spectacular also includes entertainment for the whole family and themed scenes with music. Held in Iroquois Park, this fall light extravaganza features 5,000 carved pumpkins, illuminated right after dusk and will glow till midnight. The Jack-O-Lantern Spectacular is one of the best annual light displays in Louisville and is suitable for all ages. Louisville Jack-O-Lantern Spectacular (October 4–31, 2022) What started as a friendly competition between neighbors has grown into a popular attraction, which draws crowds of children and adults. Since the 1980s, Hillcrest Avenue residents have been very serious about their Halloween décor. Halloween decorations in this residential area attract visitors from all over Louisville. Ĭorrection: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated the number of people who attended last year’s event.One of the best areas in the city to get into the Halloween spirit is the Hillcrest neighborhood. More information and tickets are on the event website here. There will also be a special night on November 2 designed for people with autism spectrum disorders and sensory processing differences. Tickets start at $14 for adults and $10 for children. Louisville’s Jack-O-Lantern Spectacular starts Tuesday and lasts through November 3. “You cherish those times like, ‘God, I used to get so mad at my dad when he would do it.’ I would give anything to have him do it one more time.”Īnd someday, maybe his kids will hassle him for talking about pumpkins on Christmas. “Isn’t that amazing, how it is a cycle? History repeats itself,” Reckner said. Until then, Reckner plans to focus on each event and to carve pumpkins in his spare time like his dad does. Reckner now has four kids who he hopes will carve pumpkins with their grandpa someday. “Then before long it went to a couple of thousand pumpkins for a week.”Īrtist carves for Louisville’s 7th Jack-O-Lantern Spectacular Then a couple hundred pumpkins turned into 500, and one night turned into two nights,” Reckner said. “The carving would get more elaborate and we would add more pumpkins. When other cities noticed and asked the family to bring the fundraiser to them, their business grew. “‘We can turn it into a fundraiser for the school system.’”īack then, Reckner said his friends and family would work 120 hours a week carving pumpkins and organizing similar fundraisers in Oxford. “My dad was like, ‘God, we should do something like this in Oxford,’” Reckner said. On a family trip to Vermont when Reckner was 15, the family found a local farm was using a jack-o’-lantern display to raise money. He said his dad even talks about pumpkins during Christmas. Reckner said his dad is obsessed with pumpkins, and would spend days vacationing from his job as a mailman to carve them. If you ask him how the family’s modest fundraiser expanded to three events that involve more than 15,000 pumpkins in total, he will tell you about a trip to Vermont. Reckner has carved pumpkins since his family’s first jack-o’-lantern fundraiser in 1988. Reckner, a 47-year-old Oxford, Massachusetts native, is the co-founder of what’s now a company that produces jack-o’-lantern fundraisers in three states - including the Jack-O’-Lantern Spectacular that kicks off in Louisville’s Iroquois Park on Tuesday. Travis Reckner loves to talk about pumpkins, and even dreams about them.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |