Motor Mayhem

Family and friends walked up and down Third Street and intersecting side streets in downtown Jamestown. Live music at Winter Garden Plaza, sponsored by the Jamestown Wine Cellar, and Lafayette Street, sponsored by Shawbucks, entertained the masses, with some people dancing along to the beat.

Originally two separate events – Thunder in the Streets and Downtown Cruise-In – Motor Mayhem came into being after they merged. While Motor Mayhem has only been ongoing for three years, Downtown Cruise-In lasted for five years and Thunder in the Streets carried on for 10 years.

“I’ve been coming here since the beginning. I like to see what is going on in the community,” said Cynthia Fuller, Jamestown resident.

While cars and motorcycles were the main attraction of the show, a lot of attendees said they enjoyed seeing and catching up to old friends.

“I’ve been coming ever since I bought this car,” said Debbie Heitman, who was showcasing her 2011 Chevy Camaro SS convertible on Third Street. “I like seeing other cars and people. I enjoy coming here with my sister.”

“I like seeing what kind of cars are here and running into friends,” said Jim Warner. “People like to fix up cars and make them into their image and put their own personality into them. Hopefully people like what they see. There are a lot of cars, some of them similar, but they are done in different ways.”

The biggest change this year involved the food vendors. Prior to this year, a lot of food trailers came into town some were local while others were not.

“They were taking some business away from our downtown restaurants,” said Edwin Rodriguez Jr., marketing events associate at the Jamestown Renaissance Corporation. “The mission here at the Jamestown Renaissance Corporation and the mission of the events that we do is to promote downtown and to promote the greater Jamestown area. So, we decided to focus more on local food.”

Nine of downtown’s most popular restaurants opened their doors and served food outside during the event including: Jones Valhalla, Shawbucks Pressroom, Studio-D Catering (operating outside the Jamestown Renaissance Center), Fresco’s Pizza, Harvest Time Cafe, Brick City Market and Deli, Havana Cuban Cafe, Jamestown Savings Bank Arena, and Lori’s Kountry Kafe.

The Jamestown Renaissance Corporation put on Motor Mayhem. JRC is a public-private partnership founded in 2006 to support the development and implementation of revitalization strategies in downtown Jamestown through planning, research, project management and stakeholder coordination. Since then, its scope has widened to include neighborhood revitalization and the positioning of the Jamestown area as a laboratory for small city revitalization efforts. For more information on the Jamestown Renaissance Corporation, visit jamestownrenaissance.org.

Original article by The Post-Journal.