SCRANTON, LACKAWANNA CO. (WOLF) \u2014 Scranton is getting ready to celebrate a major milestone for one of its biggest traditions.<\/p>\n
La Festa Italiana turns 50 this year, bringing Italian food, culture and thousands of people to Courthouse Square over Labor Day weekend.<\/p>\n
On parade day in Scranton, everyone is Irish. But on La Festa weekend, everyone is Italian.<\/p>\n
And this year, Scranton\u2019s Italian-American community is celebrating five decades of tradition.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is something that\u2019s become a time-honored tradition,” said Joe Guido, Vice President of La Festa Italiana. “People look forward to this every year, kind of marks the end of summer. Every year we bring about 140,000 people. It\u2019s great for the local economy, so there\u2019s a lot of reasons, but people do seem to love it. It\u2019s a tradition.\u201d<\/p>\n
The festival began in 1976, during the nation\u2019s bicentennial, as a way for Scranton\u2019s Italian-American community to give the city a gift that would keep giving.<\/p>\n
Fifty years later, that gift has grown into a four-day celebration featuring more than 70 vendors, Italian food, music, entertainment and activities for families.<\/p>\n
Preparations began days before the festival officially gets underway, with tents and electricians coming in first. Now, vendors are moving in and making sure they have everything they need for the crowds.<\/p>\n
For longtime vendor Pat Revello, who has been part of La Festa for more than a decade, the work starts long before festival weekend.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a chance to see the vendors all around us and as you can see now, they\u2019re here all week preparing,” said Revello. “They\u2019re preparing months in advance with their product. There\u2019s a lot of work that goes into this. It\u2019s just not the four days that we\u2019re here.\u201d<\/p>\n
Revello says the final days before the festival are when the real work begins.<\/p>\n
\u201cYesterday and today is the hard part. Getting ready tomorrow, that\u2019s the hard part. Once the people show up and you have a whole bunch of great workers, then it\u2019s easy. It\u2019s the preparation and making sure that you have everything like, do I have that spoon? Do I have that knife?\u201d<\/p>\n
For Matt Gilbert, executive chef for 16th Ward and Kevin\u2019s on Penn, this is only the second year participating in La Festa, but the experience has already made an impression.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt looks unbelievable,” said Gilbert “It looks like waves and waves and waves of people while you\u2019re standing in that tent and it gets to be a little overwhelming, but it\u2019s a lot of fun.\u201d<\/p>\n
This year, Gilbert\u2019s team will serve breadsticks, homemade tiramisu and cannoli nachos, along with food from Kevin\u2019s, which has not yet opened in Scranton but will preview some of its offerings at the festival.<\/p>\n
Last year, the team served garlic knots and went through more than 4,000 garlic knots during preparation.<\/p>\n
And for a business that\u2019s relatively new to Scranton, Gilbert says La Festa has been another way the community has made them feel at home.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re a little bit new to town, but Scranton has a really warm way of welcoming people, especially when it comes to an event like this,” said Gilbert.<\/p>\n
The festival is organized by a committee of about 12 people, who spend much of the year apart before coming together to put on the event.<\/p>\n
\u201cItalians are very passionate. This organization is very passionate about this festival,” said Guido. “We do take pride in putting it on and the fact that it\u2019s a family-oriented festival. It\u2019s a clean festival and there\u2019s a lot to do. We\u2019re just proud of all of it.\u201d<\/p>\n
And after 50 years, that sense of family and community is still at the heart of La Festa Italiana.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis committee, we don\u2019t see each other practically all year. Then we come together like one big family. So, the camaraderie is there. We all pull together and we make this work,” said Guido.<\/p>\n
La Festa Italiana runs through Labor Day weekend in Courthouse Square, celebrating 50 years of Italian culture, food and community in downtown Scranton.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SCRANTON, LACKAWANNA CO. (WOLF) \u2014 Scranton is getting ready to celebrate a major milestone for one of its…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":278549,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[178,180,179],"class_list":["post-278548","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-scranton","tag-scranton","tag-scranton-headlines","tag-scranton-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278548","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=278548"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278548\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/278549"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=278548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=278548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=278548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}