Attendees at Thursday night’s annual Stars & Stripes Festival will get plenty of bang for no bucks.
A fireworks show by Memphis company High Tech Special Effects will cap off the free community event, kicking off the long Fourth of July weekend.
The location is the Greenwood arboretum, located on the north-side riverfront between the Veterans and Keesler bridges.
The event starts at 6 p.m., and the entertainment line-up includes local country act Jon & Angela and Monroe, Louisiana, oldies band Smackwater.
Kids will be entertained by the city-maintained splash pad, a 20-by-24-foot concrete pad that shoots up columns of water, and inflatables will be set up as well. Families can purchase $5 armbands for unlimited access to the inflatables.
ArtPlace Mississippi will help kids create superhero masks and capes with materials and instruction provided. It also will offer face painting and a bean bag toss.
American Legion Posts 29 and 200 will lead a tribute to veterans, including a 21-gun salute, the singing of the national anthem and a flyover of local aircraft.
A boat parade is planned for along the Yazoo River, with vessels decked out in red, white and blue.
“We don’t have any official entries yet,” Beth Stevens said Tuesday. Stevens is executive director of the Greenwood-Leflore County Chamber of Commerce, Stars & Stripes’ chief sponsor.
Past events have drawn up to eight boats in the floating parade, and Stevens urges boaters to sign up. The parade’s outstanding entry will win $200.
The deadline to register is 5 p.m. today.
Stars & Stripes is family-friendly, meaning no alcohol will be allowed in the park. Beverages and classic carnival fare will be provided by local churches and civic groups. All proceeds from sales will support the concessionaires’ individual causes.
Stars & Stripes used to be held in Whittington Park but was relocated to the arboretum several years ago to make it more central to all of Greenwood, Stevens said.
“A lot of people walk to this festival,” Stevens said. “There’s limited parking in the boat ramp area, and we usually use the American Legion parking spaces for elderly and disabled visitors.”
Attendees can park on downtown streets and walk across the Keesler Bridge to the event, or can park on nearby streets and parking lots after business hours.
Attendees should bring chairs and blankets to settle down in anticipation of the night’s climactic event, the fireworks show.
High Tech Special Effects will set up, coordinate and ignite the show from the platform of the Veterans Bridge. The bridge will be closed starting at 5:30 p.m. today and will be closed all day on Thursday.
High Tech’s pyrotechnic performance specialists design and execute an impressive array of fire, smoke, flame, explosives and special effects for outdoor and indoor events, motion pictures, television, sporting events and all kinds of celebrations.
Its web site, www.hightechspecialeffects.com, says the company prides itself on providing as much attention to the quality of a $10,000 fireworks show as it would to a $100,000 show.
Stevens agrees that the quality of High Tech’s work, as witnessed in past Greenwood fireworks shows, is excellent.
“They do this event and the Christmas parade,” she said. “What we try to do is pick a time frame — 15 to 20 minutes is the usual frame for a fireworks display — and we tell them how much we have budgeted for the show. They build us a show around that.”
The company creates car, building and aircraft explosions for the movies, as well as smoke, mist, steam, fog, snow, wind and rain.
Indoor and outdoor flame effects, ranging from 1 foot to 100 feet high, have been created for a client list that includes music stars Dierks Bentley and Kings of Leon, Pepsi, the Memphis Grizzlies and Redbirds, and numerous movie projects.
• Contact Kathryn Eastburn at 581-7235 or keastburn@gwcommonwealth.com.
