Double the fun in Streator: 2 festivals set for City Park

Two of Streator’s popular weekend festivals have partnered to create one event Saturday featuring food trucks, home brew, vendors, live entertainment and family activities.

The Streator Walldogs Food Truck Festival will return for its fourth year at City Park, while the Streator Hardscrabble Lions Club is reinvigorating the Pluto Fest to honor Streator native Clyde Tombaugh, who discovered the planet.

Both festivals begin at 11 a.m. and will coincide with the farmers market at the park.

Pluto Fest will feature a home brew beer tasting under tents. A driver’s license for proof of age will be required to enter the tasting tent. Pluto souvenirs also will be for sale at the tents, including Pluto 2021 T-shirts, pottery mugs by Finefield Pottery, ornaments and beer glasses.

The food truck festival will feature about a dozen food trucks from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. on the 200 block of Hickory Street, on the south edge of City Park. The event is free to attend.

Children’s activities will include Joe’s spray painting tattoos, the Streator Fire Department smoke house and Magic Mark from to 1 to 3 p.m.

Musical entertainment will be provided by DJ Kevin Galloway from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., followed by Ray’s Rockets from 1 to 4 p.m at the Plumb Pavilion. Visitors are advised to bring their own lawn chairs and blankets.

Craft and retail vendors will be showing various wares in the park as well.

Proceeds from the food truck event will go toward Streatscapes (Streator Walldogs Committee), a fund for public art and beautification. The funds will go for the next public art project in Streator.

Proceeds from Pluto Fest will go toward humanitarian and community service projects of the Hardscrabble Lions.

COVID-19 restrictions will apply based on Centers for Disease Control & Prevention recommendations and state mandates in effect at the time of the event. For information on the food trucks, email streatorwalldogs2018@gmail.com or go to www.streatorwalldogs.com/truckfest.html

Some Pluto facts

The heart shape in Pluto discovered by New Horizons is named the Tombaugh Regio, after the Streator native who discovered the planet.

Clyde Tombaugh discovered Pluto in 1930 using a Blink Comparator apparatus.

Pluto was the first Kuiper Belt object to be named.

The discovery of Eris, a dwarf planet, led to Pluto’s reclassification.

The surface temperature on Pluto is minus 375 degrees Fahrenheit.