Adog parade, live performances, local handcrafted goods, and great weather drew approximately 3,000 visitors to the 36th annual Riverfest last Sunday. Held along Main Street in Narrowsburg, the popular street fair is produced by the Delaware Valley Arts Alliance (DVAA) as a celebration of the art, music, and ecology of the Sullivan Catskills and Upper Delaware River Valley.

According to Ariel Shanberg, executive director of the DVAA and organizer of the festival, the success of the event is due to a great community of nearly 50 volunteers who come together to make it happen. “Somebody said to me this morning, you guys have the best volunteers,” says Shanberg. April Bidwell of Narrowsburg has volunteered at Riverfest for around 17 years. “I just love the community,” says Bidwell. “Everybody comes together.”

To help things go smoothly, “we did a couple of things we realized we really needed to, like pop up Wi-Fi for all our vendors,” says Shanberg. He was also grateful to have the Tusten Volunteer Ambulance Service in attendance this year, “both for folks to meet them and learn more about what that volunteer service is all about, but also in case anything happens.”   

First-time Riverfest vendor Brave Biltong was a big hit with attendees, who tasted free samples of air-cured South African style beef biltong (cured meat similar to jerky). Based out of Tyler Hill, Pa., the brand was recently started by Alexander Hankoff and his business partner Iwan Zwarts, who lives in Narrowsburg but is originally from South Africa. “We just launched six months ago, and we’ve only been selling within this community,” says Hankoff. “The feedback has been incredible.”

John Quinones and his son attended as part of a Boy Scouts troop camping for two weeks at nearby Camp Aquehonga. “Our troop is from Brooklyn, and our scout master, John Farrell, lives in the area,” says Quinones. “So, every year, we come up for two weeks of camp, and we see signs for Riverfest, and I said, ‘we’re going this year’.”