Omaha Street Percussion is coming back middle of the day. They’ve been performing for us for several years. They’re a great performer and are very much interactive with the crowd. They generate a lot of excitement and energy. We’re excited about that. The pancake breakfast is back this year. New this year, one of the local Boy Scout troops is going to be running the pancake breakfast.
Are they volunteering or making the pancakes?
They’re making the pancakes. It’s a fundraiser for them. St. Cecilia is taking over our Kids Village. They do a fall carnival every year. And so, we’ve asked them to kind of do a mini carnival for the day. We’re excited about that. We are really excited about going from just having a collection of bounce houses to actually having something really interactive and growing that part of it. Music kicks off at four o’clock. Like we’ve been doing for the last few years, there’s no charge to come in. It’s family friendly, all ages.
What we do is, if you want to buy alcohol, you have to have a wristband. You get the wristband by doing an ID check which is $10. You pay $10 for the ID check to get your wristband. That’s basically a cover charge, if you want to drink, and covers our expenses. And that allows us to create a very family friendly, no gated admission, come and go as you please, great event. Music will go till midnight. It is nonstop from four to midnight, eight solid hours. While the main scheduled bands on the stage are changing out their equipment between sets, we have acoustic groups perform in between. So, like I said, it was nonstop. During the day we’ve got some poets from All Rights Reserved, which is the spoken word, high school teenage spoken word competition. They’re going to perform some of their work during the day. We get a little bit of everything. Really excited, about it.
We’ve got a phenomenal production team. We couldn’t do it without the production team. They’re a bunch of aces and they are always looking for new stuff to do and [the attitude is] “I can do that and I can do that.” It’s a lot of fun working with them. It makes my job very, very easy.
It’s very easy to see and from meeting you before and being around here, that Dundee is a wonderful neighborhood and that you have a great love for it as well. Tell me a little bit through your eyes about the neighborhood.
I was born in Miami and Fort Lauderdale and I spent most of my adult life in Atlanta. So, you know growing up as a kid, as a young adult, the idea of a small town was foreign to me. There is an area of Atlanta called Virginia Highlands. That is the Atlanta version. It is to Atlanta what Dundee is [to Omaha]. My wife and I always loved going into Virginia Highlands’ small shops and restaurants, but wasn’t necessarily you know, we didn’t live there. When we were first looking at moving to Omaha years ago, our first thought was [Dundee] was just like the Virginia Highlands. It’s a small town in a big town. All relative, right? What I have grown to love about Dundee is that- not that it doesn’t happen in other parts of Omaha -but for me, it happens here where I know a lot of the people on my street. I have great conversations. And through Dundee day, I’ve gotten to know merchants and have great interactions with them when I get a cup of coffee, go to the dentist, get my hair cut. You know, it’s all merchants that I interact with and treat me like and make me feel like a local. On Dundee Day, I see so many people that I know between my neighbors and my friends and my coworkers and the merchants and it just becomes one big friendly neighborhood party. So, the quality-of-life element there is unmatched.
Tell me a couple of new things about Dundee Day. Anything else?
Dundee Draws is definitely our big thing, 150 vendors and the food truck park is definitely a new feature. And the rest of it is the classics we love. The pancakes are back. The used book sale is back. Some of our favorite vendors are back and [there are] a lot of great new vendors.
One of the things I came to notice last year that I am really proud of is the diversity of our booths, not just the subject matter, but so many of our booths are woman owned or the point of contacts are women. A lot of independent artists and crafters are women and minorities and it gives me personal satisfaction to know that our event is a comfortable place for those folks to come out and have their booths on display. So, that’s exciting. I mean Dundee and Omaha in general are definitely diverse and inviting compared to maybe to the rest of the state or the rest of the Midwest and so it’s neat that our festival mirrors our community.
As I understand that Dundee was its own city and then it became incorporated like many other things that we know on Omaha neighborhoods today, but you’ve definitely kept flavor of what you were saying earlier. How do you think that that’s been kept because a lot of places can’t always hold on to it?
I think for the longest time Dundee was one of the few neighborhoods that that had that history and that actively preserved it. There were the Dundee Memorial Park Association, the Neighborhood Association and the Dundee Merchants Association, and the Business Improvement District. Those were all established to make, create and maintain that sense of community within the neighborhood. So that we see things like the flower baskets in the neighborhood and we see things like the signs say welcome to historic Dundee. The hardscape and landscaping up and down Underwood, the improvements that have been made to the business district that all create a cohesiveness within the community. Now while other neighborhoods are doing that now, Dundee has been doing that for a long time. And I think [of] events like Dundee Days 30 years as an organized event. We’ve been doing this since the 90s. There are not that many other neighborhoods in Omaha that have an event that has gotten to that age, to that success.
So, I think that’s a big part of it. And then I just think it’s just the nature of it’s an environment that welcomes getting out and talking to your neighbors and walking from your house up to the ice cream parlor or walking to the gas station to get a soda and so that I know my neighbors when I’m doing yard work and they walk by we always hear or say hi to each other sometimes stop and chat. So, I just think it just builds that community, that small town feeling.
Thank you. Anything you want to add?
All the extended weather forecast signs all seem to be pointing towards a really nice day. Cross our fingers..
And toes…
We’re not going to wash our cars…We’re just going to hope for really good weather.
We have we have been very fortunate to have good weather, the last three or four years to every year more memorable than the previous and I think if weather holds out I think this is going to top it all.
Thank you.
Dundee Day could use additional volunteers to help set up and tear down the event.
Check out their website for more information and how to help.
