Paul Szmal: Time to welcome in our friends from the Geneva YMCA. Summerfest is upon us. The event is this Friday and Saturday. And here to talk about it, we have Bill, who's the Festival Director. Good morning, sir. How are you?
Bill: Good morning. I'm fine. Thank you.
Paul Szmal: And Todd is here from the Geneva YMCA as well, who's been here before. Good morning. Yeah, Todd, turn that mic so, yeah, there you go. That way we can, that way we can hear you nice and clear.
Todd: Yeah.
Paul Szmal: Bill, I'll start with you because you got a long poster here that's got a whole bunch of stuff on it and it's all free.
Bill: Yes, that's one thing we pride ourselves on is we do not charge anybody to enter. Parking is free. We have plenty of parking around the area and we have a lot of events going on and it seems like we have something for everybody regardless of age.
Paul Szmal: Yeah, I mean, I'm just looking at the flyer here and I'm seeing things like a firework show, a haunted dark maze.
Bill: Yeah, we decided to try that again. We did this several years ago. It was very successful and we thought we would try it again. This year we brought in the haunted dark maze. We have a lot of help from Denver and Geneva, who's a big Halloween guy and he's going to help us set this up so that's a good effect for everybody.
Paul Szmal: And there's also an escape room I see here, a touch-a-truck event too.
Bill: Yep, the escape room we brought in for the older, the elder age group, so this way they could come in and have fun. It's really an awesome attraction that people will enjoy. The touch-a-truck is on Saturday from two to four and we have every possible emergency unit that you could think of from the Geneva police, the fire department, the state troopers, the sheriff's department, ambulance, I mean we have everything. Even the city of Geneva is bringing in some city trucks for the kids to see.
Paul Szmal: And there's some live entertainment going on too.
Bill: Yep, we have Bob Grieco Band coming in on Friday night and he's going to play till 9 30 and then the American Legion will do a presentation of American flag in honor of our 250th anniversary. We've been planning this event for over a year and then once they do the presentation of the flag, our fireworks show will start. And if you like fireworks and you like grand finales, this is the fireworks you're going to want to watch.
Paul Szmal: And you'll be able to watch along the lakefront for this?
Bill: Actually the best place to see them, we're going to close Exchange Street down, right from community center, community drive-through to the rec center and people will have the best view right there on Exchange Street. They could put a seat right on the road.
Paul Szmal: Oh nice, very nice, okay.
Todd: Todd, I know the YMCA has been a big part of this event every year that it happens.
Todd: Yes, absolutely. The last couple years Bill came along and said hey you know we've done this festival for another local non-profit in the community and you know the Y was lucky enough to team up with Bill and you know we're one week away from this awesome event.
Paul Szmal: Yeah and Bill there's plenty of activities going on on Saturday as well and anytime you're going to have a festival of course you got to have food.
Bill: Oh absolutely and that's our pride and joy right there. Yeah. We have every possible amount, we have the hamburgers, the hot dogs, we have sausage peppers and onions, philly cheese steaks, chicken fingers. This year we brought in fried bologna and peppers and onions because it seemed to be a popular hit.
Paul Szmal: Oh yeah there you go. And then we have you know the sweet treats like we have Dylan's fried pickles and we have our fried dough which has been extremely popular every year. So and we pride ourselves too on keeping it all family affordable.
Bill: Yeah.
Paul Szmal: Also a big shout out too to Peppy's we also have a ice cream, soft ice cream too for treats as well.
Bill: Excellent, excellent. Fried bologna with peppers and onions, wow. There's a place in western New York, a sports facility that does that of fried bologna with onions and they call it a flat dog because they serve it hot dog roll.
Paul Szmal: Right. Yeah so that's one of like my favorites.
Bill: Yes. So you had me when you said fried bologna it's like okay yeah all right. We thought we'd try that this year. I'll just go for the fried bologna. I'm good yeah with everything else.
Paul Szmal: How many Bill how many years have we been doing this now?
Bill: This would probably be my 28th year.
Paul Szmal: Wow. Yeah. We stopped for a couple years through COVID and then we we restarted it again and then for the this would be the third year for the Y. Right, right.
Todd: Yeah and you know this is great involvement for the Y and I know Todd last time you and I talked uh there you were working on a bunch of improvements at the facility and and all sorts of stuff. How is all that going? So it's going well um you know when it comes to what we want to do at the Y it's events like this that really make those things happen. You know a building is is is awesome to be able to have these programs and people to come inside but without the people without the programs you know none of this happens. So this is why this event is so important to help raise money for us to be able to continue to provide scholarships to folks uh you know try to keep our costs as low as possible you know pay our our staff good wages. So again Summerfest is one of our biggest events um you know none of this is possible you know I really would like to just take a quick second to thank Bill and his hours and hours late nights early mornings um you know people really don't realize how much that he's put into this.
Bill: So yeah there is it takes a lot of effort to pull all these different sources together into one place um one location.
Paul Szmal: Speaking of which um um what locations to are these events all taking place?
Bill: Everything is going to be right at the rec center 666 South Exchange Street.
Paul Szmal: Okay. Downtown Geneva um we put a huge um 40 by 80 tent is out in front in the parking lot across from the rec center and then we also utilize the entire inside of the rec center. So the big thing that I tell everybody is that rain or shine I mean we we still move forward.
Bill: Well the good news is other than maybe a thunderstorm late Friday night after the fireworks are done I think we're gonna have good weather at least that's what it looks like so far.
Paul Szmal: Yeah yeah looks good. Yeah and that always that always helps when you're doing an event like this. Yeah and with the touch a truck I just don't want to forget that we have a mercy flight helicopter coming in that will land um so that's always great to watch and and see and and again you know a big shout out to the city because the Geneva Fire Department and Geneva Police Department are so involved with this and they help make it successful.
Bill: Uh now if people want to find out more details about events like when they're happening and whatnot the list of the food entertainment etc where can they go?
Bill: Actually if they want to find out everything about the festival they can go to summerfestgeneva.com.
Paul Szmal: summerfestgeneva.com. Yep and that will tell them everything they will see all of our wonderful sponsors um that help make the event possible and they'll see they'll find out all the times and places of what all these events are taking place.
Paul Szmal: All right so everything kicks off around four o'clock on Friday capped off by the fireworks at 9 30 Friday night and then Saturday activities start uh two o'clock two o'clock in the afternoon run until about nine o'clock so again if you want to check out summerfestgeneva.com that's got all the information. Bill Todd as always appreciate it thank you for all the effort that you've put into making this a great free family fun event here in Geneva.
Bill: Thank you thank you for having us.
