Leave it to Todd VonBastiaans and Bryan McCarthy to create a county fair-style pumpkin patch on the streets of First Friday, bringing an autumnal pastime Downtown as a way to showcase area viability.
Downtown businesses decked out 60 pumpkins for the one-night-only Pop-Up Pumpkin Patch, transforming the lot on Casino Center into a landscape of showgirls, space machines and colorful logos. 222 Imperial dumped mini white gourds into a jar for the pickled-brain look. Retro Vegas pierced a plastic yard flamingo into a turquoise blue-painted pumpkin. Williams Costume’s showgirl gourd was a nice contrast to Globe Salon’s Bride of Frankenstein, the Attic’s funkalicious swirled colors and the Arts Factory’s metallic gray contraption speared with glow sticks.
“We didn’t really know what to expect, but people really came through and are already talking about next year,” McCarthy says while arranging the display. “The new owners were looking for interesting ideas. We wanted something that would be community driven and let people know that there’s more than four hours once a month here, that there’s a community Downtown that’s viable.”
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