The second-annual Roosevelt Bull Moose Festival is scheduled for Saturday, July 29, as an official part of Seafair festivities, and organizers predict a much-higher attendance this year.
A pancake breakfast will kick off the day between 8 and 11 a.m. at Calvary Christian Assembly church, 6810 Roosevelt Way N.E. More than 100 classic cars also will be on display there.
Whole Foods Market, 1026 N.E. 64th St., will feature more than 40 booths where visitors can participate in a food taste.
Other features will include karaoke, open-air art, a fashion show, a charity dog wash and photographs with the Bull Moose for kids. In addition, a free concert is scheduled from 3 to 5 p.m. at Cowen Park.
Street performers, including one dressed as President Theodore Roosevelt, are also expected. Roose-velt's Bull Moose Party, for which he ran unsuccessfully in 1912, is the namesake for this festival.
Building a community
The main force behind the festival is Jim O'Halloran, president of the Roosevelt Neighborhood Association. O'Halloran, along with Michele DeAndas, a community-relations specialist with Whole Foods, is heading up a team of about 20 volunteers.
During the 1990s, the neighborhood association talked about starting an annual community event "to help stimulate development in the business center of the neighborhood. But more importantly, to bring about a more cohesive sense of fun and community," O'Halloran said.
In January 2005, when Sound Transit decided to locate a light-rail station in the area, the association decided that a festival would be just what the community needed to fulfill its vision of a "vibrant, urban village," O'Halloran said.
It also allowed them to double the number of festival events.
"In the process of campaigning for their community with Sound Transit, this led them to who they are, where they are at and what they wanted to be, as a community," he explained.
For more information about scheduled events, visit www.bullmoose festival.org/2006events.htm.
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