We always get excited for Fall and the Yiasou Greek Festival which turns our sleepy corner of East Blvd in Historic Dilworth seemingly into the center of the known universe. We’ll readily acknowledge a decline in productivity during these days (due in no small part to Baklava coma), but hold fast to the belief that our overall boost in morale more than makes up for it. I’m reasonably certain this opinion is widely shared among our many professional neighbors stumbling back to their offices during the post-lunch decathlon on festival days.
Those who’ve passed our office are familiar with the presence of our adorable mousecars which stand sentry on the street for most of the year, but a few years ago we began to move them up onto the front lawn to make available additional street parking for the event. Fearing at first a backlash from neighbors for lawn-parked vehicles on a respectable Charlotte Boulevard, we were quickly comforted realizing the spectacle was actually consistent with the tenor of the festival atmosphere. We did not received one complaint and in fact, were privileged by the attention of hundreds of adoring children and selfie-seeking revelers.
So in 2016, we decided to double-down. If the community was coming onto the lawn to check out the mousecars, maybe they’d like some water. And so began the Palmetto Exterminators water-and-looking-at-mousecars stand which, based on the throughput of water bottles, was a hit.
Continuing the trend of being more engaged participants, we were presented with the opportunity to co-host a blood drive with Community Blood Center of the Carolinas during the 2017 festival which proved to be an extremely worthwhile and productive event. If you’re not familiar with them, CBCC is a locally-managed non-profit blood center that collects and returns blood to the community and can truly be credited with saving lives every day in our area.
We continue to look for more ways to be great community contributors, so should you have any thoughts as to how we can best leverage the gravitation of the entire city on our quiet intersection each fall, we’d love to hear from you!