Dear Members:
Maybe? Just for one year? Following – maybe – the completion of the downtown streetscape, can we consider returning the Undo’s Upper Ohio Valley Italian Heritage Festival to Market Street between 11th and 14th streets? Back to where it all began in 1983?
Remember? The main stage was on one side of 12th Street and Undo’s sit-down dining was on the other? T-Recall those crowds inside the Cork & Bottle and Office Lounge and the beers flowing from the small window at Dawson’s Meat Market? How about that jam-packed McLure Hotel, the chicken-on-a-stick in front of Reichart’s, watching all the action from the second floor of McDonald’s, and all of those white paper plates scattered everywhere still caked with powdered sugar?
We bought fake Rolexes and Gucci purses and Oakley shades, and there were those shiny rings that turned our fingers green in a day or two. Oh, and the food – the food, the food, the food – the spaghetti and stromboli and meatballs and sausage and cannoli and no one ever forgets their very first Giovanni sandwich.
Mmmmm.
Eh. Ya know what? Nevermind. Forget it. Don’t bother to reply. We know your answer. We realize Heritage Port is the perfect place in Wheeling for all of our downtown festivals, and we admit those Market Street years were a bit squeezed and really sweaty.
We’re just being silly, but …
Sincerely,
Thanks for the Memories
P.S. Thanks for bringing back the fireworks.
Cover Photo: The founders of the Italian Festival in Wheeling attended the same event in Clarksburg, W.Va., in 1982, and decided to bring the idea to the Friendly City’s downtown the very next summer. (The cover photo is from the festival’s website.)
