Art Car Cruise is taking a little hiatus, will be back next year though!
900 Block New Hampshire Street. Bring your car, bikes, skateboards or whatever & decorate it for the parade! Paint and dance to the live music featuring the blues bands, Hit or Miss followed Chris Hannemann & Prairie Fire, just have a good old time hangin' out on a spring night with those final Friday folks.
Line up in front of the Lawrence Arts Center, 940 New Hampshire Street. Park your car facing south in the center lane, with all the other cars and wheeled art, in single file. A Parade committee member will be there to direct you. Be sure to check-in, and make sure we have an entry form with your name and our entry title on it at the table in front of the Arts Center.
If everything goes as planned, we try to start the parade as close to 12pm as is humanly possible. We roll south ( go slow enough for the crowd to drink in every detail of your wheeled work of art) down New Hampshire Street to 11th Street, take a slow right onto Massachusetts Street and continue 4 blocks to 7th Street. We turn right onto 7th St., & head back towards the East 100 Block of 10th Street Southside of the Replay Lounge for the awards ceremony, short & sweet. HEY, SAFETY FIRST! Just be sure to keep a respectful distance behind the entry in front of you... we go slow, especially if you are behind kids on bikes, wheelchairs, skateboards, the lawn mower brigade, etc. so please be careful. If you want to give out candy or treats to the crowd, we prefer that you have someone walk along beside the car handing it out. That way we don't have kids (or moms, dads, dogs, grandmas, etc.) running out in front of the parade trying to get the candy.
After we've paraded our wheeled art, park your ride & meet us Southside of the Replay Lounge 946 Mass. Don't take the awards too seriously- 'cause we don't. There really isn't a "ceremony" - just a guy in a parade t-shirt talking into a mic. We do have a trio of great judges, and they do give out awards (usually made by the Free State High School art class) to folks who did an especially good job - which in our case doesn't always mean the fanciest ride -folks who've shown especially noticeable creativity and inventiveness. We leave it up to the judges to make up the categories & figure out who deserves an award. They pretty much make it up as they go - in a heartfelt kind of way - which is kind of the point. Absolutely everyone in the parade, from the 5-year-old on a trike to the police who help mark off the streets, gets an Official Art Tougeau Parade Ribbon.
Art Tougeau Post Parade Block Party. After the parade we are turning the East 100 block of Tenth Street into a Wheel-apalooza Block Party featuring Das Furbender at the Replay at 3:00. That's right, Music, Cars, Bikes, UFO'S, Food, Beverages, and People of all ages.
That's it.
Now go home & get your ride ready.