Tomato splatter battle promises messy fun at Reynoldsburg festival
Crystal Davies has grown tomatoes and eaten tomatoes, but thrown them? That’ll be a new one. Her upcoming 50th birthday, however, has roused her to shift her outlook on life and say yes to a lot of new experiences. So the prospect of arming herself with old tomatoes for an all-out battle at this year’s Reynoldsburg Tomato Festival?
It’s no longer out of the question.
“It’s YOLO,” Davies said, referencing an acronym that stands for “you only live once.” “I’m trying fun and new and different things.”
At 6:30 p.m. Thursday, she will be one of up to 150 participants age 15 and older who will divide onto two sides of Davidson Drive for the “tomato war.”
The idea for the tomato war came from Jennifer Clemens, Reynoldsburg’s special-events coordinator,
What: Reynoldsburg Tomato Festival
Where: Huber Park,
1520 Davidson Drive
Contact: 614-322-6839, www.reytomatofest.com
Hours: 4 to 11 p.m. Thursday and Friday; 10 a.m. to 11 p.m. Saturday
Admission: free
• The “tomato war” will take place at 6:30 p.m. Thursday on Davidson Drive. The entry fee is $10 and includes protective goggles.
who learned that the 54-year-old festival had hosted such a fight during its inaugural year as Republicans and Democrats squared off.
“I wanted to bring that concept back,” Clemens said.
The messy battle is part of a revamped festival, which returns Thursday to Huber Park after a hiatus in 2018. The festival took a year off after Reynoldsburg Festivals Inc., a volunteer organization, faced a sudden loss of volunteers and a community that desired a longer festival with more attractions.
“It’s such a big tradition and part of our history in Reynoldsburg, and we didn’t want to see that lost,” Clemens said. “It celebrates the heritage of our community.”
Now a city-run event, the Tomato Festival has expanded from two days to three and features the return of carnival rides and games. Midway attractions such as a Ferris wheel are indeed back, as well as national music acts (including rockers Great White on Friday and country artist Phil Vassar on Saturday), a two-day chili cook-off, and a bloody mary bar for adults.
Modeled after the much larger La Tomatina — a tomato battle in Bunol, Spain, where up to 50,000 people toss 100 metric tons of the overripe fruit — the tomato war certainly will prove to be the most messy of the new attractions. But Davies doesn’t mind.
“I have five kids,” said Davies, who has lived in Reynoldsburg with her family for 13 years. “I’m not worried at all about getting messy.”
Local farms and grocery stores are providing about 100 cases of old or unsellable tomatoes for use as ammunition. The $10 registration fee includes safety goggles. All money generated by the tomato war will be donated to a local food pantry.
Participants are encouraged to register as teams and to wear coordinated costumes. Although Davies will be going it alone — her husband and five children opted to stay on the sidelines — she knows plenty of people from her years of attending the festival whom she can target.
“I’m hoping that I find people that I definitely know and can get into some real wars with,” Davies said. “I think it’s just gonna be a lot of fun.”