This weekend the Art & Wine Festival will return to Castro Street for its 36th year. The Castro Street of today — with its busy foot traffic and restaurant row — looks quite a bit different than it did 36 years ago, and that’s precisely the point.
John Cappelletti knows all about it. Cappelletti, 64, is a former president of the Mountain View Chamber of Commerce and one of the founders of the festival. He said the idea for the Art & Wine Festival arose out of a chamber brainstorming session on how to generate interest in Castro Street, bring business back to the area, and generally revitalize the historic downtown, which had fallen on hard times.
“Forty years ago,” Cappelletti said, “the area along Castro was depressed. There was plywood boarding up the buildings and the local businesses were going under. We felt that if we could bring something back to the downtown area it would remind people in the community that Mountain View did have a downtown that they wanted to be a part of.”
The original idea, he said, was to combine an art festival with wine tasting so that people could buy their wines while window shopping the art sales. It took the chamber’s committee about a year and a half to organize the first festival, he said, which they modeled on other successful community fairs.
“It was very successful, even from the very beginning,” Cappelletti said. The first year, 85 artists participated; the following year, well over a hundred.
And the festival expanded every year thereafter, he said. In its third year, local service clubs asked to participate, and the festival became, as Cappelletti put it, “truly a community event.”
“Everyone worked very hard for the festival during those years,” he said. “It was definitely a learning experience, but every year built on the year before.”
Cappelletti, the son of Swiss immigrants, moved to Mountain View when he was five and a half years old. He attended local schools and graduated from the University of Santa Clara in 1965.
Upon graduation, he worked in the local family business family with his father and became involved in civic activities whenever he got the chance. Leading the Chamber of Commerce was one of the highlights of his civic career, he said.
Although Cappelletti says he doesn’t frequent the festival as he used to, he still likes to stroll through it every now and again.
“I still experience a great deal of pride for having been there at the very beginning,” he said. “The festival did help spark new interest in the community, so I think that the Chamber of Commerce can take some credit for the revitalization that has occurred since.”
INFORMATION:
What: Mountain View’s 36th Annual Art & Wine Festival, a two-day street festival featuring food, drink, live music and arts and crafts
Where: Castro Street between El Camino Real and Evelyn Avenue
When: Saturday, Sept. 8 and Sunday, Sept. 9, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. both days
Cost: Free
Info: Visit the Mountain View Chamber of Commerce Web site at www.chambermv.org, or call the chamber at (650) 968-8378
E-mail Melody Dye at mdye@mv-voice.com
