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Transcript

Party on the Pavement

The Don Rosen Show · Mon Sep 14, 2026

Got something big coming up.

Kelly Cruz from the Downtown Racine Corporation, executive directors with me this morning.

Good morning.

Oh, I can't see your smiling face here.

You're on the phone, but I assume you're smiling wherever you are.

I am, definitely.

So you're the executive director of Downtown Racine Corporation.

A lot of big events.

You just had one feast on the street the other day.

We did.

That was very delicious,

I see.

How do you not gain weight by doing all these events?

Because you don't gain weight.

How do you do it?

You had all these food events coming up.

Well, I think I probably did gain a pound or two at feast on the street, but for party on the pavement, I'm running around.

I usually get about 30,000 steps in that day.

So I hardly even have time to eat.

Oh, that's right.

There's something called exercise.

I don't know much about that.

I heard rumors about exercise, but I've never really been involved in it.

Okay.

So this is, this has been going on for years and years.

A little background on this from what I understand.

Tell me if I'm wrong.

Back in whatever year it was, back in the 90s, I guess, or 2000, they dug up the entire downtown street.

They repaved it because it was a mess.

They repaved the whole thing, new concrete.

And before it was open to cars, they closed it down and said, we're going to have a party on this pavement before we open them up to cars.

And it's been like that ever since.

Something like that?

Yeah.

Yeah, that was 23 years ago.

We're actually on our 22nd year because one year we skipped because of COVID.

So 22nd party on the pavement this Saturday, noon to seven.

This event has grown wildly large.

It is, it is just so cool, so fun.

12 blocks and there is entertainment everywhere you look.

It's 100% free to come down.

We've got five stages of live music.

We have live wrestling shows live.

Yeah.

Stop right there.

I read that live wrestling shows.

Is that new?

That is new this year.

Yeah, I read that and I said, I don't remember that before live wrestling shows.

So what's that about?

It's just like there's there's going to be a big wrestling ring just like, you know, WWE Hulk Hogan that kind of performance.

Yeah.

Yes, there's a group that does that we had a one-time downtown a couple years ago for a first Friday They were so much fun.

So so entertaining So that that's gonna be really cool.

Wow, that's there.

That was new I noticed that on the press release I said I can ask about that live wrestling.

Do you have the dunk tank with the kids from a high school there?

Believe they will be down there again.

Yes, they'll do the also be down there doing the pie in the face pie a palm but

Yeah, there's going to be, I mean, every, we're going to have acts throwing this year.

So that's

new.

Wait a second, wait a second.

Acts

throwing.

Yes.

This is not going to be a live person who's going to be, you know, I know in the carnivals, they used to throw the acts and they had a woman standing there and had the acts missing her by a few inches.

You're not doing that though.

Oh gosh, no.

Okay, good, good, good.

You can

actually go up and throw the act at the target.

We have disc golf.

We've got Mexican dancers.

We have.

A German fest inside party on the pavement.

It's going to be amazing.

We started that last year and we've actually just made that area even larger.

And it is basically a mini German fest with, you know, Wiener Hosen and Brock's and even Bernie Brewer is going to be down there with the...

with the German sausage guy from there

and German

dance performances throughout the day, Oktoberfest performances, Oktoberfest music.

So you've got that.

I mean, five stages of live music.

So if you want to hear some live music anywhere you walk, you will hear it pulsating through downtown.

Now, I know that our older David Mack and his wife do a lot of German Fests.

Stuff and I know

they do.

I'm sure they'll be down

there.

And he's always in Lederhosen.

Mm hmm.

I don't know what I would look.

I don't know what I would look in it, but I want to look like that.

I can't imagine what I would look like in Lederhosen.

I'm going to get to tap the ceremonial keg.

So I guess that the tradition in Germany where before Oktoberfest begins, they tap a ceremonial keg.

you're doing that.

Yes.

Oh, wow.

This I got to

see.

Yeah.

Yeah,

and then we also have, of course, we've got lots of food trucks, so tons of food, so definitely come hungry.

We've got about 100 vendors that are going to be down there.

Of course, the downtown businesses are going to be open and wanting you to explore everything that they have to offer.

We've got, what else, DJs throughout as well.

We've got.

disc golf for the kids to try.

It's kind of a different, it's a newer sport.

If you've never tried disc golf, you can try that for free.

I want to blow through some of these so quickly here.

The division BMX stunt team.

Oh my

god.

They

bring a massive half pipe and they are kids ranging from nine years old all the way to adult and they go around the nation and do this, but they're

Couple of them are actually their hometown is racing, so they love to give back to our community and they will be doing three performances.

And when I say they are high flying, they are high flying.

They are doing the flips, the twists, the turns, everything.

My goodness, that's going to be at the quarter of, let's see, I got over here.

Don't say anything.

College Avenue and 6th Street at 1230, 230 and 430 p.m.

Yes, so make sure you're there for that.

You're

not

going to want to miss that

sweatshop movement.

I don't like the word sweatshop, but for dance lovers sweatshop movement.

It's a group hip hop break dancing to the corner of Wisconsin Avenue and sixth street throughout the day.

it's so cool to watch them break dancing.

And I mean, hip, they do a phenomenal job.

When you have those pretzels at German for the mini German fest, I think it'd be those big pretzels the size of like a briefcase.

Oh, yeah.

was like those pretzels.

And I got some other things here.

You mentioned disc golf at throwing.

Who came up with that idea?

I think Yolanda at the office or someone in my office came up with that.

I think it was Anne or Yolanda.

And we had them down there for a first Friday, like in July.

I believe, or August.

And people loved it.

So we said, you know what?

Come on back and come down to party on the pavement.

You know, in addition, we've got a classic car show going on on Sam Johnson Parkway.

So if you love looking at

that,

that's always fun.

We've got to have, of course, househouses and bounce obstacle courses for the kids to burn off some energy as well.

So there's lots of activities for kids of all ages.

You know, I don't know.

You're too young to remember this.

with a Johnny Carson show.

He once had, there was a TV show called Daniel Boone on NBC and Ed Ames played Mingo on that show and he threw axes on the show.

So Johnny Carson said, teach me how to throw an axe.

So they had a figure of like a cowboy or something drawn on a board and me and Ed Ames threw the axe to show Johnny and he hit the guy right in the, you know, what's

with the ax and the audience went crazy and tried to take the ax out and Johnny said, no, no, no, leave that ax there.

And he said, that would do it if you threw the ax there.

And it's a very famous Johnny Carson.

They always showed it on the anniversary shows.

And if you want to, you can Google that on YouTube and find that famous scene there where you threw the ax at Ames and Johnny Carson.

That was a great bit on the Johnny Carson show.

Hopefully that won't happen here.

No,

it's in a safe environment.

We also have some really wonderful Mexican dance groups coming down and they do traditional Mexican dance performances

today.

you've ever seen that, it's really, really neat.

Hold on.

We got a couple more things to talk about here.

This is party on the pavement.

It's coming up this weekend, this Saturday, downtown Racine.

And you say, well, where is it?

It's downtown.

You can't miss it.

They get the streets closed off.

I mean, you got to find a place to park and then walk through.

And it's a whole day event.

You'll be there till night.

Trust me, there's more than enough things to do for the entire family.

Kelly Cruz, executive director of the Downtown Racine Corporation on board this morning.

We're talking about party on the pavement.

Coming up this Saturday, Downtown Racine.

If you're just tuning in, this is the anniversary date of when they used to close.

They put a brand new road downtown Racine, brand new concrete road all through the downtown area.

And they closed it down the very first day.

So cars couldn't drive on this brand new road.

Only pedestrians can have a party on it.

And it's been like that ever since.

And it used to be in October, and I was telling Kelly, I have photographs of us broadcasting from there with winter coats on.

So you moved it up a little bit,

right?

Yeah, you just never know what kind of weather you're going to get in Wisconsin in the early fall.

So we're hoping for gorgeous weather.

Please pray for a sunny day.

But yeah, it's normally like a nice, you know, low 70s, which is perfect.

And it's going to be a fun day.

You've got to get down there.

It is such a fun celebration.

And honestly, you know, it's 100% free.

So you could go down there and not spend a dime and you'll have a fantastic day.

But you can spend some money and have a nice day too.

You can eat a lot of food.

You can

also spend some

money.

Some of the schools are there that we talked about the dunk tank.

You know what school does that?

Is it like case high school or like something like

that?

I was felt bad for

that.

I know which one you're talking about, but yeah, we have so many school groups that are down there.

Wonderful.

And I felt bad during the in October they used to dunk that poor little girl in the dunk tank and it was freezing outside and you know, it's not that difficult to hit the target and dunk her.

And I felt bad.

She kept going in that water over and over again.

But, you know, she wasn't complaining.

I felt bad about it.

You have, let me count, one, two, three, four, four stages of music.

And I think on that, what I sent you, I didn't have the info yet, but actually there's five stages.

Five

stages.

The mash will have three bands throughout the day as well.

And so they were just confirming which bands, but they'll have

a couple really wonderful bands.

All the bands are local bands.

They're a diverse set of music.

So it's just really as you're walking through, you're going to hear great music.

I can guarantee that.

Mexico, lindo stage.

I'm looking at that.

Oh, that looks like some good Mexican music.

The hano music playing thing played.

Yes.

Mm hmm.

Yeah.

They come from Chicago to do this and

I mean, this is just what, what I love about this event is it really celebrates the diversity of our community, right?

I mean, you have all of these different groups and organizations and nonprofits represented.

You've got your downtown businesses able to shine.

You've got different food trucks from every single type of nationality that you can imagine.

So much, you know, all of these different, you know, the BMX, the car show, the acts throwing, the disc golf.

There's one way you didn't you didn't mention one thing though.

One thing you left out.

And if you want to be an urban cowboy, you have a mechanical bull.

Oh, that should be in front of Marcy's.

Yes.

And I watched the John Travolta movie, Urban Cowboy.

You ever see that movie?

No.

OK, you should watch it sometime.

And these people getting thrown from the mechanical bull except John Travolta learned how to ride it and he wins the girl in the hole.

You know how that works.

Anyway, so a mechanical bull is going to be there.

And of course, it's not going to be like they did in Urban Cabo where they throw you off the bull onto the street.

So where's that going to be?

It should be in front of Marcy's Unmain because they're kind of a country bar.

Yeah.

See, I would do it, but I don't want somebody throwing me on it.

I could ride it slowly, I think.

Sure.

I mean, you're talking about a city boy riding a horse.

I never did that before.

Yeah.

I mean, I just think this event celebrates, like, literally something for everybody.

For the Brewer fans out there, we've got Bernie Brewer going to be down there as well.

And where are the gymnastics going to be?

We're seeing gymnastics demonstration, right?

Yeah, they'll be on the 400 block of Maine.

Yeah, something I'm not used to either, gymnastics.

My daughter was, she was big on that stuff.

She was always good swimmer, gymnastics and everything.

She didn't get it from me, I'll tell you that.

Wow, so that's going to be there as well.

Oh, I hope it's a nice day.

I just hope

I do too.

And there is, you know, for those planning on coming down, you can take state street or you can go up on maybe like eighth or ninth street and then take Lake Avenue and you can get into any of the numerous parking ramps that are off of Lake Avenue.

So like the third and Lake Avenue, there's the parking ramp in there, the double tree hotel.

And then there's the Civic Center parking ramp.

So just make sure you're either entering from either State Street or if you're coming from the South, get onto Lake by 8th Street at the latest.

And you'll be just fine to find a good parking spot and it's $4 all day.

Now, this should go without saying, but you can park downtown Racine on the streets.

I mean, just we're going to assume that

at all.

We set the streets down beginning at around 7 AM

Saturday.

And we've got a few hours where all of us just work really hard to get an entire festival set up within a few hours.

And speaking of that, we would love volunteers still for Saturday.

So I think at just 13 and up, we can definitely use you.

So please reach out to the DRC office.

Even if you're willing to give up two hours while you're down there, I think that's great.

And a friend of mine used to say, and we were talking about the parking, you know, obviously you can't park on the streets and downtown during the festival.

It's most obvious to the casual observer.

And that's so true.

But you get people, oh, can I park right in front of the monument square there?

No, you can't.

Not during the festival.

There are supposed to be set down for safety reasons, but there's plenty of parking.

Yeah, I know you could park this whole bunch of streets to park on.

Here's one for you here.

All the food vendors.

Here's what they go doing.

Asian, Mediterranean, German, Venezuelan.

I don't know what Venezuelan food is.

Mexican, Italian, Greek.

What's, do you know what Venezuelan food is?

That's Don Arapas.

She's a Venezuelan food truck.

I don't know off the menu off the top of my head, but yeah, she is from Venezuela and she brings some really delicious food on her food truck.

You know, I'm the guy who doesn't try new things.

But I might try that just to see what it's like so I can say I tried it.

And then

on top of that, of course, you've got all of the restaurants that are normally downtown open for this as well.

So you can still get Salute's pizza that day.

You can still get red onion.

You can get, you know, one of millions of we have wonderful restaurants downtown too.

So I mean, definitely come hungry.

When did you start planning this?

Is this like the Thanksgiving Day parade in New York City where they start planning it the Friday after Thanksgiving?

Oh, well, we probably started about February.

Really?

OK, yeah, because you got to get people all signed up to come down.

Yeah.

Yeah, you've really got a lot of planning goes into this, a lot of coordination.

And, you know, it's it's a big deal and we want to make sure that it's a great experience for everybody.

So we like to be extra organized and try to grow it every year.

So it's a lot of fun.

OK, I'll let you list all your sponsors here, the people who paid and.

who are helping get this thing financially underway.

Why don't you list the sponsors?

Oh, I don't have them in front of

me.

Oh, I got them.

I got them.

I'll say them.

got them.

I'll say them.

I got them.

I got

them.

I got them.

I got them

And WRTN is one of our wonderful sponsors.

No, you missed the biggest one.

Downtown Racine Corporation.

Yeah.

How do you forget that?

Yeah, this is a good event.

And I love it.

I was there at the very first one.

And it was because we parked our butts there broadcasting from Monument Square with our winter coats on.

And it was so much fun.

We had a good time doing that.

All

right.

Good.

You got to go.

You

got to go.

You got to go.

I promised you 729.

You got to go.

Right?

All right.

Thanks for having me, dad.

All right.

Talk to you soon.

There you go.

It's Kelly Cruz, executive director of the Downtown Racine Corporation.

I promise you're 729.

There we go.

Got her out on time.

All right.

Downtown Racine Corporation, party on the pavement.

It's this Saturday all day long.

Get down there.

I hope it's nice weather.

If it's nice weather, you're going to have the greatest time of all, even though it's not nice weather, bring an umbrella.

You'll have a good time.