Hoboken Welcomes Spring With Annual Arts Festival

Hoboken held its regionally famous Spring Arts and Music Festival on Sunday, drawing thousands of residents and tourists to Washington Street to shop for art, hear live music and feast on a wide choice of food.

The festival featured about 300 vendor tables, many manned by visual artists and others selling hand and custom made crafts and household goods.

Kenny Kudulis brought his collection of digital paintings from New York for his fourth Hoboken festival appearance. The images are zany cartoons of characters he calls “kudu-lah critters.”

“They're based on all the people I see walking around Queens,” he said.

Toni Daly of Beekman's COPA Soaps was servicing customers when she said she has been coming to the festival longer than she can remember. She and her husband hand carve scented soap in their Philadelphia workshop.

“People like these nice people here are why we keep coming back,” Daly said while wrapping a package for her customers. “This is a beautiful event, and there's a sense of camaraderie between the tables.”

Several Hoboken organizations participated in the festival, including the Hoboken Dads, the Hoboken Elysianettes Running Society, the Hoboken Family Alliance, the Hoboken Harriers running club, the Hoboken Historical Museum, the Hoboken Motorcylce Club, the Hoboken Relay for Life, the Hoboken Rotary and Party With Purpose. The Hoboken Family Alliance sold homemade baked goods to raise money for the Cookies for Kids with Cancer fund.

Many local businesses also participated, including the Barksy Gallery, Bin There Store That, Hoboken Golf, Hoboken Radiology, Lana Santorelli Gallery and Seasonal Health. The Monroe Center for the Arts filled over two dozen booths with its businesses, including drama companies the Mile Square Theatre and The Theater Company.

Della Markferding of Bricks 4 Kidz, located in the Monroe Center, brought her enhanced, even motorized Lego bricks for kids to play with.

"We're an after-school program where we use Legos to expose children to engineering and architecture,” she said. The program also runs a preschool, birthday parties, field trips and a summer camp.

A popular attraction was an orange open-top Lamborghini parked on Newark Street and brought by new rental company Broadway SuperCars.

"It's an opportunity for regular people to drive these cars," said representative Nick Cornwell. Cornwell said the Lamborghini, sold for $247,000, rents for $900 over 24 hours.

Similar to recent years the festival featured three performance stages with almost 20 musical acts, including one stage near Observer Highway, one at Seventh Street and one in the children's pavilion near Third Street. The children's pavilion featured a merry-go-round and large inflatable slides.

Guests to the festival found plenty of things to eat, including roasted corn, shishkabob, Texas barbecue, zeppole, and alligator sausage just flown in from New Orleans.

The festival also had a political undercurrent. City Council president Ravi Bhalla, Democratic committeeman Phil Cohen and several politically active citizens . Bhalla said their goal is to register over 1,000 people by November.

“It's a non-partisan voter registration drive,” Bhalla said. “We're trying to make sure Hoboken has a higher percentage of people who vote.”

The Republicans of Hoboken group invited State Senator Joseph Kyrillos to their table. Kyrillos, of Middletown, is challenging incumbent Senator Robert Menendez in the congressional election this fall.

“Hoboken is one of the nerve centers of New Jersey,” Kyrillos said. “I'm having a great time here today.”