LAKEWOOD, Ohio – Summer is waning, but there are still a few festivals on the calendar, including two this weekend.
The 32nd annual Lakewood Community Festival will take place 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sept. 7 at Madison Park, 13209 Madison Ave., Lakewood and the 10th annual European Festival will be 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. at St. Mary Magdalene Byzantine Catholic Church, 5390 W. 220th St., Fairview Park.
Madison Park will be filled with craft, food, game and information booths plus live entertainment, bounce houses, the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Studio Go and more during the Lakewood Community Festival.
The festival will take place rain or shine, and admission is free. The event is sponsored by the Lakewood Community Festival Inc. and the city of Lakewood.
Many of the city’s nationality churches will be on hand with religious, art, jewelry and other items for sale as well as a variety of ethnic foods. Sausage, sauerkraut, stuffed cabbage, kolachky, nut and poppyseed roll are among the popular foods available for purchase.
At the European Festival, there will be music, ethnic traditions and cuisine from countries across Europe, as well as activities for visitors of all ages, faiths and backgrounds.
A variety of ethnic musicians and dance groups from Northeast Ohio will perform. The Shotskis, a Cleveland-area polka band will headline the entertainment with a polka party 7-10:30 p.m.
Baba’s kitchen and bakery will feature ethnic favorites including St. Mary Magdalene’s hand-pinched pierogi, stuffed cabbage (holupki), kielbasa and sauerkraut, cabbage and noodles (halushki), chicken paprikash, sauerkraut balls, hot dogs, chips and cucumber salad. Homemade pastries include nut roll, poppyseed roll, apricot roll, baklava and other ethnic pastries.
Children’s activities include Mr. Pierogi’s Grand Adventure, a special children’s-size area filled with activities to keep children busy.
Mic Night: North Olmsted Arts Commission will sponsor a Friday Night Mic Night for local talent of all ages 7:30-10 p.m. Sept. 6 at Springvale, 5871 Canterbury Road, North Olmsted.
The event will be hosted by Jason Patrick Meyers. In addition to live performances from top local talent, a free caramel apple bar and a cash bar will be available. Admission is free.
Monthly meeting: The Cleveland Police First District Community Relations Committee will have its monthly meeting at 7 p.m. Sept. 5 at St. Ignatius of Antioch Parish, 10205 Lorain Ave., in Cleveland’s West Park neighborhood. The First District covers all of West Park.
Those attending are reminded to bring canned goods, paper products, household goods or peroxide that will be donated to St. Ignatius.
SEO Workshop: The Downtown Lakewood Business Alliance, a program of LakewoodAlive, will offer a Search Engine Optimization workshop for small businesses 8-10 a.m. Sept. 12 in the multi-purpose room at Lakewood Public Library, 15425 Detroit Ave., Lakewood.
The workshop, which will be led by Blue Ridge Media Co., a digital marketing agency based in Lakewood, will help small businesses learn how to beef up their website presence. It is open to any Lakewood small business.
Cost is $5 for DLBA members and $10 for non-DLBA members. Register online at LakewoodAlive.org/SEOWorkshop or call the LakewoodAlive office at 216-521-0655.
SEO is the process of improving the position of a website during an organic search using search engines such as Google or Bing. Websites that appear higher in search results tend to get more traffic to their pages, which potentially means more business.
Paid advertising and social media can help bring traffic to websites, but most online traffic is driven by search engines. Workshop leaders said a small business can improve its SEO by using the right keywords and by optimizing locally to focus on customers in a specific area.
DLBA is a merchant association striving to ensure Downtown Lakewood remains one of the region’s top destinations for dining, shopping and entertainment.
Cast your ballot: There will be a primary election on Sept. 10 in Fairview Park’s Ward 5 and Lakewood’s Ward 1, where voters will select the top two candidates in nonpartisan council races. These candidates will face off in the general election on Nov. 5.
Also, Fairview Park voters in Precincts A and B (Ward 5) will have a new polling place: Bain Park Cabin, 21077 North Park Drive, Fairview Park. Previously, they voted at St. Mary Magdalene Byzantine Catholic Church on West 220th Street.
The Cuyahoga County Board of Elections recommends that voters confirm their precinct and voting location prior to each election by calling 216-443-VOTE (8683) or visiting boe.cuyahogacounty.us/en-US/my-voting-information.aspx.
The Fairview Park Branch of the Cuyahoga County Public Library will offer a program focusing on some of the unique children’s television hosts that once were featured on the Cleveland airwaves. (Carol Kovach/special to cleveland.com)
At the library: The Fairview Park Branch Library of Cuyahoga County Public Library will offer Dennis Sutcliffe’s program, “Growing Up Cleveland – Barnaby, Captain Penny and Ghoulardi,” at 7 p.m. Sept. 17 at the library, 21255 Lorain Road, Fairview Park. The program is sponsored by Friends of the Fairview Park Branch Library.
Registration is required by visiting cuyahogalibrary.org or calling the library at 440-333-4700.
Know your home: LakewoodAlive will offer Weatherization Basics, the 11th workshop in its Knowing Your Home series, from 10 a.m. to noon Sept. 14 at Cleveland Lumber Co., 9410 Madison Ave., Cleveland.
The educational program will help homeowners get their homes in shape for the fall and winter, as well as help them save money. It will cover a range of middle- to high-impact improvements and “hacks” that homeowners can do to help keep cold air out and warm air in their homes, including caulking and air-sealing techniques, installation of weather-stripping, best practices with storm windows and other ways to make their homes more energy efficient.
The workshop also will discuss include the benefits associated with an energy audit and how it can make large projects like insulation or furnace replacements easier and more cost beneficial.
Attendance is free, but reservation are requested. Call 216-521-0655 or visit lakewoodalive.org to reserve a spot. In lieu of charging for the events, participants are asked to consider either making a donation to LakewoodAlive or bringing canned foods or other non-perishable items for donation to the Lakewood Community Services Center.
Information, please: Readers are invited to share information about themselves, their families and friends, organizations, church events, etc. in Fairview Park, Lakewood, North Olmsted and West Park for the A Place in the Sun column, which I write on a freelance basis. Awards, honors, milestone birthdays or anniversaries and other items are welcome. Submit information at least 10 days before the requested publication date to [email protected].