Boo Festival brings local vendors, food, games to Tarentum's Riverview Memorial Park

Local crafters, food trucks, games and other fall festivities drew families into Tarentum’s Riverview Memorial Park to celebrate Halloween.

Sponsored by the Tarentum Recreation Board, Saturday’s event featured about 25 local vendors, a bouncy house, hayrides, a magician, face painters, an obstacle course and pumpkin art.

“It definitely brings a lot of good things for the community,” said Kaitlyn Selfridge, of Harrison’s Natrona Heights neighborhood, who brought her daughters Charlotte, 3, and Harper, 4, to enjoy the festivities. “It’s a positive environment to have kids hang out.”

Selfridge said her family often visits the park, and they love events like the Boo Festival that bring the community together.

“I’d like to see it go the whole span of the river, see it grow,” she said.

Katie Kelly, of Mount Pleasant, said she was visiting the festival with her kids because it was a fun way to celebrate Halloween.

“I wanted to do more with the kids this year,” she said.

For others, like Leanne McBurney, of Tarentum, visiting the Boo Festival is a tradition. She comes every year.

“It gets everybody out for something positive,” she said as face painter Christine Patton drew a rose on her daughter, 5-year-old Leela Gonzalez’s face.

McBurney said her favorite part of the event every year is watching “the kids being happy.”

Patton said she brought her face painting talents to Tarentum for the same reason.

“It’s how happy it makes kids,” she said.

The event is also a good way to boost local vendors, said McCall Emerick, of Brackenridge. Her knitting business, McCall Knits, benefits from events where she can meet local customers, she said.

“We’ve been working really hard at building a brand, and now when you see people wearing your stuff, that’s a really great feeling,” she said, adding that the local vendor fairs she’s been participating in this year have brought her repeat customers and introduced new people to her brand.

Emerick, whose great aunt taught her to knit at age 4, launched an Etsy shop for her products about three years ago. Having face-to-face interactions with people at local vendor fairs, she said, helps her connect with local customers more personally.

“There’s a lot more local followers,” she said.

Desiree Singleton, who owns Harvest Moon, a Tarentum coffee shop, said the Boo Festival and other local events are good opportunities to garner new customers and point out their business, which is located just a few blocks away.

“It’s always nice to just be part of the community,” she said. “I meet new people every day.”

Events like the Boo Festival lift up the Tarentum community as a whole, Singleton said.

“Tarentum had a bad rap for a while,” she said. “Now, my children walk from up the hill where we live to the coffee shop all the time. Events like this show people it’s possible to have businesses down here.”

Aleesha Kelly, of Vandergrift, was showcasing her wares — which ranged from wands to jewelry to bookmarks — at a booth she manned with her family. She said her business typically does “pretty well” at events like the Boo Festival.

“I put on a bit of a display,” she said, dressed in a wizard Halloween costume. “I like to go to events that bring the kids, like wizards and witches and stuff.”

Her sister-in-law, Ashley Alter, of New Kensington, said she enjoys such events because she can watch the community thrive.

“I like seeing the little towns around here come to life,” she said. “It’s cool to see them reviving themselves.”

Tarentum Borough Manager Dwight Boddorf said it means quite a lot to host an event that brings people from other areas into Tarentum to enjoy the park, support local businesses and provide a fun day for kids.

“The main driver for this is to provide for the local community so they can bring their whole family to visit Tarentum,” he said.

This year, the festival coincided with the borough’s scarecrow contest. Local businesses and organizations decorated light posts throughout Tarentum with scarecrows. People voted at a booth at the festival to pick a favorite.

Saturday marked the second year the festival took place in its current form, said Carrie Fox, president of the Tarentum Recreation Board, which organizes the Halloween festival and other community events, including the Tarentum-Brackenridge Christmas parade.

“We’ve done the Boo Festival for many years, just in different forms and fashions,” she said. The event had previously taken the form of trick-or-treat in the park or a costume contest. Adding the vendors, she said, helped expand the event into something that could be fun for anyone.

“We wanted it to not just be for children anymore,” she said. “We wanted it to be for all ages.”

Last year’s event drew about 1,000 people, Fox said.

“This is one of our bigger events,” she said.

Vendors paid $20 for a space at the park, she said, and all of the money will go back into future community events. As soon as Saturday’s festival wraps up, she said, they’ll start planning for next year.

“It sends chills through me when I see the kids,” Fox said. “It’s just so fun to see the people enjoying what we provide for them.”