Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, August 3, 1995 TAG: 9508030014
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: STEPHEN FOSTER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG LENGTH: Medium
All for Steppin' Out, which kicks off once again Friday and lasts through Saturday.
As they have for 15 years now, craftspeople and merchants will line College Avenue, Draper Road and Main Street, offering items up for sale. Bands like "The Kind," "Electric Woodshed" and "The Yams From Outer Space" will play. People will party.
The annual event, sponsored by the Downtown Merchants Association, boosts many local businesses' prosperity, but not without an added degree of labor.
"It's a lot of work," Gillies Confectionary's Ranae Gillie said this week.
"It's always a better weekend," she said. But considering the time put into preparing cookies, muffins, scones and her "infamous" or "famous" - she's not sure which - oat fudge bars, "we usually break even.
"I still think if we didn't have it, there would be something missing."
She gets plenty of agreement.
"I'm sure we'll be there," said Scott Rapier, manager of Blue Ridge Outdoors. He and his employees will show up at 8 a.m. Friday to begin setting up a "North Face" tent outside the shop, and plan on putting in 14- hour days.
At Books, Strings & Things on Wednesday, manager Randall Horst had at least a ton of work to do, three in fact.
He was rounding up people to help him receive a ton-and-a-half load of "dirty books" arriving that afternoon. That load will go with a group of about the same size that will be on sale during the weekend in the store's "dirty book" sale, where thousands of nicked or scuffed volumes will be on sale at 50 percent to 90 percent off their cover prices.
"They don't look new, but they're not used," Horst said. "Ninety-five percent of them are perfectly fine."
Steppin' Out, which BS&T owner Richard Walters and other downtown merchants organized under the name "Deadwood Days" back in 1976, is "certainly the biggest thing in the summer for us," Horst said.
The festival will run 10 a.m.- 10 p.m. each day, with more than 200 booths operated by merchants, craftspeople and nonprofit groups. There will be children's events all day Saturday, including a "fun-run," a karate demonstration and clowns aplenty. The Lyric Theatre will be open for walk-throughs.
The Downtown Merchants Association uses part of the proceeds from the event to fund scholarships, help sponsor the town's Christmas parade and Tour DuPont festivities and sets aside some to build a permanent Farmer's Market sometime in the future.
Two days before it begins, "We're bald and we're cranky, and right about now, we're like, 'What do you want?!'" one of the event's organizers, Judy Murray, shouted jokingly at a customer in Fringe Benefit.
"But it's fun, and everybody has a good time," Murray said.
Memo: ***CORRECTION***