Features

This year’s annual Solano Avenue Stroll Sept. 10, in addition to the food, entertainment and crafts fair, silent auction and a parade, will highlight the 26-year-old Stroll’s recognition by the Library of Congress. 

The popular regional event draws about 100,000 people to the Solano Avenue shopping district, as the biggest and oldest free street festival in the East Bay, said Lisa Bullwinkel, Executive Director of the Solano Avenue Association. 

The Solano Avenue Stroll was selected by the Library of Congress for its Local Legacies Project initiated by the library to celebrate its bicentennial, she said. 

She said the library developed Local Legacies to ensure that future generations will be able to learn about the traditions of local communities as they were played out in cultural events at the millennium. 

Congresswoman Barbara Lee nominated Berkeley/Albany’s Solano Avenue Stroll along with Oakland’s Black Cowboys Parade, Dia de Los Muertos, and The Festival of Greece. All four events were chosen for the Local Legacies collection. 

The Stroll is represented in the library’s folk section with copies of 25 years of Stroll scrapbooks kept by the Solano Avenue Association, and with historical Stroll posters. 

Also included are 28 8-inch by 10-inch color copies of photographs, taken in the last five years, that are representative of the Stroll. The Association was required to historically document them, correctly identifying all the people in the photos. 

Taking Local Legacies one step further for this year’s Stroll, the Solano Avenue Association’s theme is Local Legacies on Parade. 

Celebrating the contributions of community members, the Association is requesting nominations of local people who are “cultural icons, quirky and wonderful,” said Bullwinkel. “You know them when you see them.” Nominees must be residents of Berkeley, Albany, Kensington or El Cerrito. 

To nominate a person who may be a local legacy, the association requests a minimum 25-word description. Nominators are requested to include their own names and addresses and telephone numbers along with the same information for the nominee. 

Bullwinkel said a tentative deadline for nominations is July 15. The nominators and their local legacies are invited to ride together in the parade that begins at the top of Solano Sept. 10. To nominate a local legacy, mail information to The Solano Avenue Association, 1563 Solano Ave., #101; Berkeley 94707. The e-mail address is lbullwinkl@aol.com