WEST READING, Pa.- Ice blocks. Chainsaws. And plenty to see along Penn Avenue.<\/p>\n
The Ice and Spice Fest is back in West Reading, bringing live ice carvings, special deals, and winter energy to the borough.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s our 9th annual Ice and Spice Fest,\u201d said Nick Price, Main Street Executive Director. \u201cWe have live carving starting at 3 o\u2019clock today, all the way through until 7 o\u2019clock tonight.\u201d<\/p>\n
This year, the festival is bigger than ever, with 35 ice sculptures, up from just 22 last year.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe really branched out to non\u2013West Reading businesses to get more,\u201d Price said. \u201cOne of the neat ones is a live carving right on the corner of North 6th and Penn, it\u2019s a Nittany Lion. Penn State Berks is doing one similar to what they have at main campus, so we definitely have some neat ones.\u201d<\/p>\n
While Friday and Saturday are packed with events and live carvings, Sunday will look a little different.<\/p>\n
\u201cSunday, with the weather, obviously they\u2019re going to be here with the cold, but we don\u2019t have any events planned on Sunday for safety,\u201d Price said.<\/p>\n
Behind every sculpture is ice carver Danny Kissel.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt doesn\u2019t matter if it snows. It doesn\u2019t matter if it\u2019s cold,\u201d Kissel said. \u201cIt\u2019s wintertime. This is when ice festivals happen.\u201d<\/p>\n
For Kissel, the goal goes beyond the ice itself.<\/p>\n
\u201cTowns are dead at this time of year,\u201d he said. \u201cSo the idea is to bring people in. People that would normally stay inside come out, look at the ice, buy some drinks, get some food, and stop at the stores. It really promotes a town in the wintertime.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ice and Spice Fest activities continue Friday and Saturday along the 400 to 700 blocks of Penn Avenue, with live carvings happening throughout the weekend.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WEST READING, Pa.- Ice blocks. Chainsaws. And plenty to see along Penn Avenue. The Ice and Spice Fest…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":95082,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[46712,46714,46713,28,128,130,129,707],"class_list":["post-95081","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-danny-kissel","tag-ice-and-spice-fest","tag-nick-price","tag-pennsylvania","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news","tag-west-reading"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95081","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=95081"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95081\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/95082"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95081"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}