With Labor Day passed and the holiday season beginning to loom, the Seal Beach Chamber of Commerce will be keeping Main Street lively this weekend a with a three-day sidewalk sale.
Merchants on Main Street in Old Town Seal Beach will create a festive marketplace atmosphere from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, Sept. 13, 14 and 15.
Visitors to the street will see shop owners filling the sidewalks with merchandise set out on racks and tables, offering pre-holiday bargains and one of a kind items.
This is the first of the Chamber’s semi-annual sidewalk sales of the fall season. The idea for the events was promoted as a regular offering in October of 2011. At that time, Chamber member Nick Patruzo had a dream of taking the sidewalk sales to a new level.
Patruzo, co-owner of the Endless Summer clothing store on Main Street said he wanted to show visitors that shopping in the seaside city could be a fun experience. He recalled that growing up in New Jersey, sidewalk sales were a common practice and often included outdoor cooking with the aroma of fine Italian foods wafting through the air and friends and neighbors chatting and laughing together while strolling the street, looking through the various businesses’ wares.
“There is no question that a sidewalk sale generates business,” he said in 2011 when the economy was struggling more than today. “The worst you can do is a little more and in this economy a little more is good.”
Sidewalk sales were more common in the 1970s, but they dropped of in the 1980s.
The Seal Beach Chamber of Commerce started bringing them back during the Run Seal Beach events. In order to make them more affordable, the merchants banded together under a blanket of insurance for the events. Previously they often had to purchase individual insurance for their sidewalk sales.
