SUNFEST SAYONARA
Rain doesn’t wash away enthusiasm for fest’s finale
Brenda
WEST PALM BEACH — Siclari tugged at the hood of her tan raincoat and maneuvered through a light SunFest crowd as rain trickled down Sunday afternoon.
While most others ducked under the tents that lined the streets, Siclari was prepared for rain. After all, this was her 15th time at the waterfront music festival.
“I’m one of the 10 people you find in the crowd when the rain is pouring down,” said Siclari, a New Jersey native who flies to Palm Beach County, where her mother lives, nearly every year for SunFest. “I’m probably the first one here and the last one to leave. It’s that good.”
Despite the morning showers and occasional afternoon drizzles, the streets of downtown
West Palm Beach were packed Sunday for the festival’s fifinal day. Loyal SunFest fans, young and old, were drawn to the high-profile headliners — ska-punk band Sublime with Rome, funkrock group DNCE, alt-rock band Cake and a South Florida favorite, rapper/entertainer Pitbull.
Siclari saw Pitbull at SunFest six years ago, when he headlined on a Sunday evening. The performance was so captivating, she said, she had to see him again.
“He puts on one of those shows, no matter the mood you’re in, who cares if it’s raining, you’ll dance in the rain just to see him,” Siclari said.
Many were drawn to SunFest to see the Miami native.
“I can’t wait to see Pitbull,” Julia Gamarra, a junior at Cypress Bay High School in Broward County, said hours before Pitbull’s performance. In the meantime, she and her friend, fellow junior Kaylin Ambrose, took in the artwork, food, games and business marketing booths scattered between the three main stages.
“There’s so much to get done,” Gamarra said. “You can spend an entire day here and it still isn’t enough.”
The pair had one-day passes to their third SunFest.
“It’s become a tradition,” Ambrose said.
A perennial feature of West Palm Beach culture, the fourday concert series is tradition for many. And the fifinal day typically draws the largest crowds.
“Because of the fifireworks,” said Crystal Naylon, of Port St. Lucie. She and her friends hit SunFest for the fififth year in a row.
The 30-minute waterfront pyrotechnic display follows the fifinal acts of the night. As fireworks launch into the night sky, they light the Intracoastal Waterway below in color as onlookers bask in the final moments of the festival.
“You can’t do Sun Fest without the fifireworks show,” said Naylon’s friend, Vanessa Simms.
Their only complaint? Too many good acts.
“All the good bands go on at the same time,” Simms said. The group debated watching Pitbull or Cake, who both performed at 7:30 p.m.
Even SunFest newbies in the crowd were wowed by the event.
“It’s phenomenal,” said William Santiago of For t Pierce. Santiago’s son bought him a ticket to his fifirst SunFest experience Sunday. He sat by the seawall, yards from the JetBlue Stage, recording DNCE’s performance with his iPhone.
“I don’t have to be too close,” he said. “I just like hearing the music.”
Not far from where Santiago sat, other entertainment captured the attention of festivalgoers, eager to snap photos: a balloon arch reading “Art District,” a woman on stilts, juggling sailors and graffiti artists creating work in real time, among other displays.
“There’s something for everyone,” said Anthony Joyner, who managed a cluster of food booths for San Francisco Puffs & Stuff, a SunFest vendor for at least six years, since Joyner started working the festival.
Each year, Joyner watches SunFe st adapt with new desired features, big or small, such as high-top tables near food booths and the bars floating on barges along the Intracoastal.
One thing stays the same though, Joyner said.
“It always delivers.”