File photo by Joy Marie Hallare / The Collegian
In its 27 years of existence, Vintage Days has expanded into a three-day event that features booths, live entertainment and more. What started as an event that used to be attended primarily by students, is now a popular community event hosted at the heart of campus.
Today, students continue to attend and partake in the booths that are displayed. The three-day event attracts more than 50,000 people who come from Fresno and surroungding communities.
This year’s Vintage Days will consist of 150 crafts faire booths, 32 student organization food booths, 10 student organization game booths, and six third-party food vendor booths.
“We tried incorporating a lot of Fresno State pride into this year’s Vintage Days,” Student Director Kathryn Updyke said.
Vintage Days advisor Josh Edrington said the reason the event was created to celebrate the harvest of the surrounding agricultural crops at the end of the academic year.
Although Vintage Days is one weekend, it takes a student committee an entire year to organize. Students in the committee have applied through the student activities and leadership development office to be a part of the crew.
“Each student committee member is responsible for researching, planning and executing their own event, which make up Vintage days,” Edrington said.
In order to get students involved with the event, the Vintage Days Committee has strived the entire spring semester to get the word out to the student body.
“The committee has been staffing a Vintage Days information table in the Free Speech Area since the beginning of the spring semester, putting posters on sign stakes throughout campus, flyers distributed to various areas throughout campus, 8,000 copies of the Vintage Days publication, the Vintage Press, website and the Vintage Days Facebook and Twitter accounts,” Edrington said.
As in previous years, student organizations will be on site providing a variety of food and game booths. Despite the hours spent organizing the event and the time spent in the sun manning the booths, students say their hard work is expected to payoff. Profits from the booths will go to campus organizations.
“Vintage Days is the largest collective fundraiser for student organizations,” Edrington said.
For this year, a few changes have been made, as well as some additions. New attractions include a clown, a puppet show, and an interactive physics experiment show.
“Be sure to check out the mechanical bull sponsored by the Clovis Rodeo and Y101 and the KSEE 24 Concert Series happening on Saturday, April 21,” Edrington said.
The 2012 Vintage Days will kick off today and conclude on Sunday.
“I hope we get students from all different backgrounds to participate with Vintage Days,” Updyke said. “They can participate in things like Boomtown Carnival, the scavenger hunt, casino night and a movie showing of ‘Grease.’”