Baker West has a history of some great events for the children in our neighborhood. In past newsletters we talked about our great July Fourth block parties. Well, there were others. In August, National Night Out is an annual community-building campaign that promotes police and community partnerships and neighborhood camaraderie to make our neighborhoods safer and more caring places to live. In the past, we celebrated this event to bring us together and also show an outdoor movie at a dead end court in our neighborhood. We had a popcorn machine, drinks, and candy. We were visited by members of SJPD, representatives of our city council office and it all went off very well. Again, this happened because volunteers in the neighborhood let us use their laptops to show a DVD, a local church let one of their members (who was one of our members too), borrow a commercial sound system. Another member provided a projector to run off a PC and built a big screen that was mounted on a fence We typically had between 85 and a 100 adults and children at this event!
In October there was a Halloween celebration. Young children, many in costume, came. There was a Halloween parade around a block. Various snacks, cookies, etc. were shared and the finale was the breaking of a big candy filled piñata. We’ve lost many of these yearly events due to Covid, staying in our houses to work, and it would be nice to begin to bring our families out of their homes occasionally to meet each other. Not just the house next door, but the neighbor on the next block.
– Submitted by Ron Marfil, member emeritus
Here are some pictures from the 2016 block party!
