As the Russian author Anton Chekhov said, “People don’t notice whether it’s winter or summer when they’re happy.” And there were hundreds of happy people in downtown Reading this past weekend for the First Annual Fire and Ice Festival.
From the night of Friday, Jan 16 to the afternoon of Sunday, Jan. 18, Penn Street was transformed into a magical land of ice sculptures, hot chocolate and music. Despite the cold weather, people wandered the city’s square to watch the live ice carving demonstrations, sample locally made wine at the ice wine bar, pick up unique food at gourmet food trucks, dance to a dozen live local artists and, of course, pose for pictures with beautiful interactive ice sculptures.
The Downtown Improvement District worked for months to coordinate this event after executive director Charles Broad got to see a few other Ice and Fire festivals across the state. They wanted to start something that could improve the outlook of the city.
Reading Mayor Vaughn Spencer took the stage during the opening ceremony on Friday night. He expressed gratitude for all the people involved in the planning and execution of the weekend-long event. He saw the festival as a hope for things to come. Reading is going to “start having events in the downtown area. Because we know that if we have events here in Reading that people will come. [They will] stop at some of the establishments and [experience] what we have here in our city.” The DID has been working hard to remake Reading’s commercial district and attract new businesses to the area. Spencer went on: “This is what a main street and main street activities should look like. We look forward to years of activities on our main street… Let’s party folks!”
And people definitely partied. The wine bar provided by Antler Ridge Winery offered free samples and pay-as-you-go glasses of wine to help people warm up from the below freezing temperatures. People spontaneously danced to the music and kids (and kids-at-heart) took a ride on the ice slide and sat on the ice throne.
Fire and Ice festivals celebrate the good parts of winter, but this was more of a celebration of local culture. All the food trucks were based in Pennsylvania, including Gourmand from Sinking Spring. There was no “traditional” festival trucks offering things like funnel cake and cotton candy. Instead each food truck had a different, very unique set of food. There was even a sandwich, aptly named “The Berks,” made with Lebanon bologna, cream cheese, apple butter and Good’s potato chips. No festival in Reading would be complete without a pretzel truck as well.
All the ice sculptures were created by Sculpted Ice Works in Scranton and were all sponsored by local businesses. The live demonstrations throughout the day on Saturday attracted quite a crowd, many of whom stuck around for most of the three hour carving session in the morning. A sea of fog rose above the heads of the crowd as people sipped their hot chocolate and huddled near the flame towers.
One festival-goer, Maria Thomas, carried her bundled-up toddler while she swayed to an Amy Winehouse tribute sung by Reading native Jennifer Kinder. She had to raise her voice to be heard over the chainsaws cutting through 900 pound blocks of ice, but she said, “This is exactly what I was hoping for. This is what this city needs.”
