Orange International Street Fair Wraps Up 45th Year of Culture, Food and Beer

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The Historic Orange Circle, closed off all surrounding streets Labor Day weekend and transformed into a fairground that featured food, clothes and beer from around the world. Each street represented different countries that offered delicious food that included, Kalua Pork Sliders from Polynesia Street, Loukoumades on Greek street, Tacos from Mexico Street as well as delicious desserts like pancake puffs, Aebleskivers from Denmark.

The Orange International Street Fair is one of the largest of it’s kind in the United States with an astonishing 300,00-400,000 people attending in the course of 3 days, making it the biggest street fair in the West Coast. 2017 marks the fair’s 45th year.

Eduardo Aguilera visited on opening day like he has been doing for the last five years, “ I have been coming for the past few years and I feel at home; It’s a lot of the same people of the community that come every year, you get to know the vendors and visitors but every year you also have a lot of new people that come from all over the state.”

However, the wild weather here in Southern California caused them to have lower attendance than normal. Brian Lochrie, Chair member of the Street fair explained “ It was a lot hotter than in the past 3 or 4 years and because of that we have a lot less crowds and people that came may not have stayed as long and of course we had a thunder storm and power outage.”

The rain and humidity did not stop many from going and enjoying the food and music. Beatriz Gutierrez from Anaheim visited the fair with her son for the first time “ I really enjoyed it.” Beatriz said. The music is great and it’s nice to see people from all over the world coming together and enjoying each others food and company.”

The community comes together every year and helps many organizations, Lochrie says “ The fair is a non profit organization and we are all volunteers. We like to bring and help the community and for some of the organization this is the money maker of all the fundraisers they do all year. ”