El Cerrito's Biggest Event: Fourth of July Fuses Family Fun, Eclectic Music

Thousands of people are drawn to El Cerrito’s Fourth of July celebration, the city’s largest annual event, because it is fun, friendly, safe, and it’s close to home, explained recreation director Monica Kortz. It offers crafts, good music, and the opportunity to try different foods. There are plenty of activities for children, and you can feel comfortable letting them roam around the fair, she added.

“You walk three steps and you run into someone you haven’t seen in a while, talk, walk another three steps and see someone else,” she explained. “It’s a great event.”

This year, Kortz will have the opportunity to enjoy El Cerrito’s Independence Day bash without the responsibility of overseeing it. After 25 years with the city’s recreation department, Kortz will retire Friday, June 24.

The free-admission festival has grown several-fold since she came to work at the city. Then the event featured tea dancing in the Community Center, free swim at the pool, and a small stage, a few booths and games in the center’s parking lot.

Last year, the event won an award (see photo) from the California Park and Recreation Society. This year 7,000 people are expected to pack as well as Pomona Avenue alongside the park and into the parking lot of . Moeser Lane along the park will be closed as well.

Twenty-two venders will sell food, and more than 100 other booths will feature city-sponsored and non-profit groups, individuals offering things like arts and crafts, and businesses. About 17 artists will be represented in a section of the theater parking lot set aside for the . Other activities will include 22 games, four rides for children, face painting, a climbing wall, bounce houses, an obstacle course, and Circus Imagination, which guides children in performing their own circus.

The festivities begin at 10 a.m. Most activities continue through 6 p.m. with the music continuing until 7.

Some of the growth has come as organizers try to add a bit each year, but a big factor is the embracing of the "worldOne Festival," which brings special vision of music to the event.

“What makes the event is worldOne and the city together," Kortz said. "We bring in the family and they stay for the music.”

Mason’s worldOne aspect of the event is in its 13th year but hasn’t always been clearly fused with the rest of the activities nor the draw it is today.

Mason calls himself “socially imprinted by the’60s” and said he has been exposed to and appreciates a wide range of music. When KJAZ folded a decade and a half ago, ending his job as broadcast manager, he envisioned a new kind of musical experience with some of the discipline and ambition of commercial radio but with a variety of sounds “put into a blender” rather than focusing on a narrow genre. Despite the broad range of styles embraced by his musical vision, it carries a distinct message that is positive, inclusive and unifying.

He began volunteering at El Cerrito High, which has a radio station license under the call letters KECG. Corey came up with the idea of a multicultural festival at the high school, but when he approached , El Cerrito’s city manager at the time, Pokorny steered him toward joining his event with the city’s Fourth of July celebration.

Despite Pokorny’s support, the worldOne Festival had a slow start. Located across and up the street at Cerrito Vista Park, out of sight of most of the people attending the festivities in the Community Center parking lot, it drew few people in its first few years.

Following the 2000 event, attendee Rocky Leplin wrote to El Cerrito Wire:

“Four members of KITKA gave a free concert in Cerrito Vista Park on the 4th of July to about twelve people. Meanwhile, across the street, a crowd was sampling a festival of crafts, food, and child-friendly activities outside the Community Center. None of these could hope to compare in richness of experience to the artistry of the world-class and world-famous women’s voices, whose performance, however, was evidently unknown to the fairgoers.

"The City of El Cerrito needs to relate these two events to each other in a manner so that the superior music at Cerrito Vista Park—which continued through much of the day—had an audience that justified the effort of the performers."

That’s just what the city eventually did, helped along by the years in which the rest of the event moved to Portola Middle School’s lower blacktop, bringing the two venues in clear view of one another.  Now Mason and other event organizers like Kortz meet together first monthly then as the event grows closer weekly through most of the year. Though Mason remains responsible for the main stage performances and the multicultural and artistic flavor that the park takes on that day, the line between the worldOne Festival and the rest of El Cerrito’s July 4 event is blurred.

Mason, who first commuted to El Cerrito from San Francisco, now lives in El Cerrito with his wife, Debra Sue Kelvin, volunteer festival co-producer and practitioner of Chinese medicine.  In addition to putting their own time and money into the event, they share their home year-round with festival trappings like pieces of the stage, a rocking horse that was used last year to encourage attendees to “pony up” donations, and artwork that transforms Cerrito Vista Park into a multiculturally flavored fairgrounds. Mason is a full-time Spanish and radio teacher at El Cerrito High, and his worldOne Music dominates the station, KECG 88.1 and 97.7 FM, licensed to the high school.

Kelvin said the festival and worldOne Music is in Mason’s life every day. “It’s the way he sees the world. It’s never off his mind.”

“I love seeing people gather in a festival setting,” said Mason. Sharing art, food, and music helps people to connect to one another, he said.

“I couldn’t be more thrilled that it ended up on July 4,” he said. All the different types of art and music incorporated in the festival represent the world, but also who we are as a community and as Americans, he explained.

The event receives about $30,000 in financial support from the city, according to Kortz, but it also relies heavily on sponsors, donations, and volunteer labor. The city encourages nonprofit groups like PTAs and scouts to pledge blocks of volunteers in exchange for a stipend. And Kelvin and Mason welcome volunteers through worldOne as well. Donations can be made through the city or you can pony up donations to the jars on the main stage. Additional festival updates are available on worldOne Festival’s Facebook page.