20th edition St. Pat’s parade to feature the Village People
Downtown Hot Springs will resonate with the sounds of “Y.M.C.A.” in six months as the Village People takes the stage on March 18, a day after the First Ever 20th Annual World’s Shortest St. Patrick’s Day Parade, Visit Hot Springs said.
“The Village People are coming,” said Visit Hot Springs Marketing Director Bill Solleder. “I think it’s great. You know, Hot Springs has a great reputation for bringing in, you know, sometimes eccentric celebrities and bands. Always trying to do something fun and just keep the energy high, and I think the Village People are a great addition to everything we’ve done in the past.”
In addition to the iconic ’70s band, the Molly Ringwalds will be performing immediately after the parade.
“With six months to go, we’re also announcing that The Molly Ringwalds band, which was such a hit at the Memorial Day festivities at the Hot Springs Airport, will be back in town to entertain at a free public concert immediately after the parade on St. Patrick’s Day,” Visit Hot Springs CEO Steve Arrison said in a news release. “We were flooded with calls asking us to bring them back to town for the parade. They knocked the Memorial Day crowd out with incredible cover versions of memorable tunes from the 1980s, so we decided to bring them back for the 20th anniversary of the parade.”
Solleder, who was part of the first edition of the parade, said the 20th anniversary of the event is “exciting.”
“Twenty years is a great milestone for the parade, and when I think back about the World’s Shortest St. Patrick’s Day Parade, I remember being in the very first parade,” he said. “I had an entry in the parade, and recently … I digitized some old camcorder footage and found footage of the entry that I had put together for the parade.”
While Solleder said the crowd for the first parade was enthusiastic, “it was not even in comparison as to what the event has grown into. It’s really astonishing to see how many people were there then and how many people actually attend today.”
“It’s a great milestone for Visit Hot Springs … (which) birthed the parade from an idea at what was with then the Brauhaus and now Steinhaus Keller is where the original founding group would get together, which included Steve Arrison as part of that group, and what it’s grown to today,” Solleder said. “And I’m thrilled not only to be a participant before I was with Visit Hot Springs to be one of the people that help organize the parade today.”
The parade always sports 40 entries, which includes the celebrity grand marshal, the parade starter, and the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders, Solleder said, but he recommends people get their entries for the parade in soon.
“Parade entries are opening, so if anyone’s interested in being in the parade, I would get them in now,” he said. “In the last bunch of years, we’ve had more entries than we’re able to allow in the parade.”
Solleder said entries should be “over the top and fun and artistic and magical.”
“That’s what we’re looking for,” he said. “We’re not really looking for people just throwing up a banner and throwing it on their F-150 and driving down the street with it. We’re looking for something that really represents what the parade has come to be — a really fun magical event in Hot Springs.”
This year’s parade will also be starting later due to St. Patrick’s Day being on a Friday.
“Because the parade will fall on a Friday this year, we will start 30 minutes later,” Solleder said. “So it’ll be at 6:30 p.m., and that’s just to allow people to get back from work and get ready for the weekend and also to allow a little flex time from Oaklawn, which is also in session at the time. So with it being a little later when the parade starts, it will be darker sooner, so we’re encouraging people to light up their parade entries with LED lights or whatever they can. I think that will make the parade even look better than it always has.”
While the Village People have a song with one of the shortest titles, Solleder said it was not part of the consideration to bring them to the Spa City.
“That has not even occurred to me, but that’s really funny,” he said. “But I can’t wait to see everyone come to Hot Springs for that and actually throw their arms up in the air spelling out YMCA on Bridge Street. That’s going to be great.”