Dishing at the Copper Skillet

Sunday morning I grabbed a quick bite to eat with a friend and while waiting for our order, overheard bits of a conversation taking place at another table. Let’s just say that the animated chatter wasn’t the result of ‘what’ll you have?’ but an ongoing discussion of ‘what’s going on with Martinez?’

The comment that caught my attention ran something along the lines of ‘it seems like the city is trying to drive business out…’ When they started recounting the lack of any daytime family oriented events scheduled on July 4th, I wiggled my way into the conversation.

A little later while driving mom and me to church I mentioned that Martinez didn’t even have its soapbox derby this year - mom's comment back to me was, “why doesn’t Martinez want to have celebrations? I mean just because we’re not a big city like San Francisco doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have fun things to do too!” Why indeed.

So back to parade planning and all things 4th of July; it was recommended that I look at different parade schedules in order to dovetail ours with what other cities are doing. Apparently people like attending multiple events, makes sense to me. But what makes even more sense is creating a schedule of events that builds a compelling case for more people to hang around throughout the day. I know our senior citizen center hosts a pancake breakfast and if we resurrect the soapbox derby that would put parade time somewhere a little after noon.

It's my hope that enough people will get a hold of this vision, then an afternoon festival down by the park could fill in the gap between parade and fireworks. Who knows Martinez might finally get listed in the Contra Costa Times, along with most of our surrounding cities, as a go to destination for 4th of July celebrations.

Linda