ALLENTOWN, Pa. \u2014 The smell of smoked barbecue and the sounds of live blues music filled downtown Allentown on Saturday as people gathered for the 18th annual Blues, Brews & BBQ Festival along Hamilton Street.<\/p>\n
Brittney Ciardi, senior vice president of Allentown Initiatives for the Greater Lehigh Valley Chamber of Commerce, said the festival featured about 100 vendors and three stages of live music.<\/p>\n
For many attendees, the food was a major draw.<\/p>\n
“This is the first time we’ve been down here, so good stuff,” said Jay Loomis, who attended the festival with friends while sampling barbecue from vendors lining Hamilton Street.<\/p>\n
Throughout the day, festivalgoers enjoyed live blues performances, craft beverages and barbecue offerings ranging from ribs and pulled pork to specialty sandwiches and other smoked favorites.<\/p>\n
Among the vendors was Grumpy’s BBQ Roadhouse, where pitmaster Nate Meixsell spent the day preparing food for the steady stream of visitors.<\/p>\n
“It’s a great event year after year. The longer it goes on, the more people find out about it,” Meixsell said.<\/p>\n
The festival featured live music, barbecue vendors, craft beverages, artisan booths and family-friendly activities throughout downtown Allentown.<\/p>\n
For attendee Marluv Racks, the festival highlights the growth of community events throughout the region.<\/p>\n
“Back in my day when I was a kid, there wasn’t really anything like this. But now there’s way more events, there’s way more stuff to do, and as you can see, everybody’s outside. It’s beautiful,” Racks said.<\/p>\n
Now in its 18th year, Blues, Brews & Barbecue continues to serve as a celebration of community, bringing together food, music and local culture.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ALLENTOWN, Pa. \u2014 The smell of smoked barbecue and the sounds of live blues music filled downtown Allentown…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":218593,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[214,232,153,155,154],"class_list":["post-218664","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bethlehem","tag-_homepage_top_stories","tag-allentown-area","tag-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem-headlines","tag-bethlehem-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218664","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=218664"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218664\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/218593"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=218664"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=218664"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=218664"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}