Chula Vista’s Third Avenue is home to many signature events.
There is the annual Taste of Third in March; the historic Lemon Festival will take place sometime in August. And during the holidays, spectators get to enjoy a holiday parade flowing down Third Avenue.
In the meantime, this summer, expect a lot of cars and art at the first ever Village Summer Nights event, a series of events that combine the arts and classic cars.
The first Village Summer Night event happened two weeks ago on June 12; future dates are June 26, July 10, July 24, Aug.7 and Aug. 21 from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. in Chula Vista’s downtown business district.
Rosie Lopez, co-owner of the sports novelty Eazy Toyz and a Third Avenue Village Association board member, helped bring the summer event to fruition.
Lopez said the idea of Village Summer Nights started from a book signing that Eazy Toyz hosted last year for the book, “San Diego Lowriders: A History of Cars and Cruising.”
Several car clubs showed up for the signing and displayed their lowriders in the Third Avenue parking stalls.
Lopez said the book signing and cars were a big hit amongst the community that they kept getting asked when was the next one?
The Third Avenue Business Collaborative, a newly formed group of Third Avenue business owners, wanted a similar event as the book signing and the old lowrider community event Blast From The Past that stopped in 2012.
The group wanted to make the event official asked city council to sanction it as a ciy event, which the city council approved.
Raquel Cortez, hair dresser at Rico’s on Third, said Village Summer Nights is intended to promote businesses on Third Avenue with a different demographic.
“The purpose behind bringing all this back was for the commerce,” Cortez said. “For small businesses like ourselves who make it month-to-month and we wanted to look for a future in being able to have our businesses here and what better way was to bring out this amount of people at one time.”
Robert Naranjo, a former organizer for Blast from The Past, said based off experience from Blast From the Past, he knows the new event will eventually pay dividen for businesses, if not now, then later.
“This event gets people out here to look at all the new changes, to have a good family-experience, to walk the street and leave their money here if not now than in the near future,” Naranjo said.
