Red Lion Street Fair 2026, 96 Frames Before the Thunderstorm

My favorite frame of the day

My favorite image of the day is my ten year old, Cori. She has anxiety most days, and this kind of thing does not come easy to her.

She was out there on her own, handing out flyers for free school supplies for kids across York County.

Walking up to people she had never met. Putting one in their hand. Then moving to the next one.

A proud dad moment!

Six in the morning

It was already light out at six in the morning, downtown Red Lion. Small business owners and vendors were slowly setting up their booths all around me.

I was setting up two tents. One for the H.E.Y Project, my wife's nonprofit. The other for Growing Hands for Brighter Futures. They're the vendors. I'm not. Making sure a tent goes up right and comes down right is kind of my thing.

This one isn't a job for me. Nobody hired me for this. I just always end up with a camera in my hand once the tents are up and the street starts filling in.

The street I drive every day

I moved to Red Lion in June of 2022. I drive S Main Street all the time, because Lion Pharmacy is where I pick up my family's medication every month.

As Red Lion grows, it gets harder to see the town for what it actually is. Harder to see the people who have lived here most of their lives. I don't have a fix for that. I have been here long enough now that the regulars know me.

This year was the 49th annual, put on by the Red Lion Area Business Association. Forty nine years running. Saturday, August 8th, nine in the morning to four in the afternoon, across the closed streets of downtown Red Lion.

Once both tents were up I walked the street and greeted the other vendors, handing out flyers for the upcoming Stuff-A-Bus event. Down past Bricker's French Fries and a bounce house set up toward W. Broadway.

Then I took a minute to go get Cori and Charlie, before the crowds came.

They walked into the middle of the closed street like they owned it. Cori already had her sunglasses on. Charlie's my youngest, and if the business name looks familiar, that's why.

It didn't last. Real clouds moved in within the hour, though I didn't clock it happening until I looked back at the frames later.

What Stuff-A-Bus is

It's a school supply drive, run by Growing Hands for Brighter Futures, a York nonprofit. Twelve school districts, over 1,000 bookbags handed out so far. Free, no strings attached.

The sign says the rest better than I can. Second annual, August 22nd, 10 to 3, at Chapel Church here in Red Lion. Local vendors, food trucks, a kids zone, free admission. Chapel Church sits right across the street from Hudson Ridge, where I live. Behind it, actually.

Down the street once, then back up. Then down again for a lobster sandwich from the Cousins Maine Lobster truck!

They had Maine Root sodas lined up on the counter, right next to the Coke and Sprite. Ginger brew, root beer, blueberry.

Walking the street

There's a guy a few booths down who wood-burns signs, a whole wire rack of them. RAVENS burned into cherry wood, Thankful in script, one that starts The Dog has a and trails off before I could read the rest. Twenty dollars a sign, ask about special orders. A Ravens sign in York County tracks. We sit about halfway between here and Baltimore.

My wife and her best friend ran the two tents. This is their second year at the fair, same exact spot as last year. Last year, 2025, was our first Red Lion Street Fair. We didn't know what to expect.

This year we knew the spot going in. I had the route figured out, the best parking, and the way in and out that skips the worst of the traffic. It's a small thing, but it means I spend less of the morning stressed about logistics and more of it just paying attention.

There was a band playing right in front of Lion Pharmacy, same as last year. Same pharmacy I walk into every month. Best spot on the street for it.

My camera didn't come out until 10:57. The fair had been open two hours by then. I shot for about an hour, until 11:57, right before the storm broke, and came home with 96 frames.

An hour isn't much time to cover a whole street fair. I work the length of the street once, end to end, and stay close enough to catch what's already happening in front of me instead of chasing it. Some of it is planned, waiting a beat for the right person to walk into the right spot. Most of it isn't planned at all.

A few booths down, somebody had a wire wall of vinyl toys, blue price tags everywhere. Forty dollars, twenty, fifteen, all Eevees a hundred and twenty. Star Wars next to Batman next to Sonic next to the Grinch, more Pokemon than I could count.

Foltz's had a guy parked in his own truck, arm draped over the lemonade dispenser, watching the street go by. ServSafe certificate taped to the window said Ryan Foltz. I smiled at him and he recognized me right back. Foltz's runs a stand at Central Market every Saturday, right next to my wife's booth, so we're neighbors there too. I shot this same cart last year for a portfolio image. This time he already knew who was behind the camera. He's the only vendor all morning I actually got a portrait of instead of a booth.

Down toward the dunk tank, a guy in a ball cap sat in the cage waiting for somebody to hit the target, a handful of kids watching from the grass.

Further up, the street opened into that wide shoulder to shoulder crowd, tents both sides all the way down, the Route 74 sign and the stone church with the tall windows anchoring one end. MILKSHAKES and SMOOTHIES flags going the whole time overhead.

The banners on the light poles

The whole time I'm walking that street, there are banners hanging off every light pole. Portraits of local guys who served, names and ranks printed right under the photos. Petty Officer Third Class James Kessel, Navy. Specialist Joseph Fourhman, Army. PFC Carl Grim. Technical Sergeant Gerald Zarfoss, Army, 1943 to 1946.

I love those banners. Every ride through Red Lion, I notice one I hadn't seen before. A street I drive constantly, and it still turns up something new if I actually look up.

The light had gone flat by then too.

A lot of the faces out there were familiar from the year before. Where else in town do you get to see that many of them at once?

Then it rained

We got rained out. Midday, dark clouds rolled in and the wind came with them. Tents started to move. Items started blowing off tables.

Tents started coming down, but not as fast as you'd think. You could see everyone wanted to stay, hoping the storm would pass over instead of settle in. Why would anybody want a morning like that to end early?

I made my way back through the crowd and started breaking our tents down, packing things in fast. I loaded the last item into the truck as the first raindrop hit. That's how close the timing was.

I don't love losing an hour of the fair to weather. But a whole street packing up together, all at once, for the same reason.

The fair is scheduled nine to four, rain or shine. A thunderstorm is a different story. About forty five minutes after I left, the organizers shut the whole thing down.

But for a couple of hours the whole town was standing in the same street. That's the part I keep coming back for.