"Little did I know I would still be doing it after five decades," Mark Cortright told the North Coast Journal last year, standing in the same spot on the Arcata Plaza he'd occupied for 51 consecutive years as of that fair. "It's my only show I do now."
That sentence tells you something about this weekend that the event listings don't. The North Country Fair isn't a festival that repeats itself for two days. It's two different gatherings that happen to share a name, a location, and a nonprofit organizer. If you've only ever gone once, on whichever day worked with your schedule, you've seen half of what's actually there. This year's edition runs Saturday and Sunday, September 19 and 20, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on the Plaza. It's the 52nd time this has happened since 1974, and the two days still don't look alike.
Saturday Belongs to the Theater. Sunday Belongs to the Drums.
Saturday's centerpiece is the All Species Parade, and it's led by the Arcata Playhouse, not by a musical act or a civic group. That distinction matters more than it sounds. The Playhouse brings its own aesthetic to the street: giant puppets, stilt walkers, costumes built from the theater's own prop shop rather than off a rack. People dress as animals, plants, insects, whatever creature they feel like being for an afternoon, and the whole thing moves at the pace of a piece of outdoor theater because that's what it is. The parade traces back to the late Tim McKay, co-founder of the Northcoast Environmental Center, who started it decades ago as a way to fold environmental advocacy into something playful enough for kids to actually enjoy.
Sunday is a different register entirely. The Samba Parade is led by Samba da Alegria, joined in recent years by Samba do Mar Humboldt, and it grew out of the All Species Parade almost by accident. Musicians who used to play samba rhythms during the Saturday event split off in 1986 when percussionist David Peñalosa led the first standalone Samba Parade. Two years later, dancer Ann Youmans brought an actual troupe into the mix, and from there it became its own tradition. What you get on Sunday is percussion-driven and sustained, dozens of drummers and dancers moving around the square together rather than a procession of individual costumes. Samba do Mar's artistic director Maria Vanderhorst put it simply when the fair marked its 50th year: the parade has grown considerably over the decades.
Both parades step off at 1 p.m., which is worth remembering if you're planning around them rather than stumbling into them. Everything else on the Plaza, well over 150 booths of local art, food, and crafts, three stages running music through both afternoons, kids' activities scattered across the grass, functions as the frame around those two very different centerpieces.
The Booth That Hasn't Moved in Fifty Years
Cortright, the potter quoted above, is from McKinleyville, and he's been setting up in the same location on the Plaza for over five decades of fairs. That kind of continuity is easy to walk past if you're weaving through the crowd looking for lunch, but it says something about what this event actually is. The North Country Fair isn't a rotating cast of vendors chasing whatever's trending. A lot of the people behind the tables have been doing this since before some of their customers were born, and they keep coming back to the same eight feet of sidewalk because that's where their regulars know to find them.
That kind of continuity doesn't happen by accident, and it's part of what makes a weekend like this feel different from a generic street fair. The fair itself has been consistent about what it's for since 1974: an event built around cooperation, community, and environmental advocacy, organized by a nonprofit group of community members called the Same Old People. The name hasn't changed over the decades. The mission hasn't drifted. That's rare for anything that's been running for over fifty years in a small town.
The Small Rules Locals Already Know
If you're newer to Arcata or you've skipped a few years, a handful of details will save you some friction:
- No dogs on the Plaza during the fair. This isn't a suggestion, it's the policy, and it's been consistent year to year.
- Parking is on the street around the Plaza, not in the lots that belong to the businesses fronting it. Those lots stay reserved for the businesses themselves.
- Bring your own cup if you're planning to get a drink from one of the beer or water vendors. The fair runs its own zero-waste effort in partnership with Recology, and a refill station is set up on-site for water.
- Biking in is actively encouraged, with bike parking available near the Plaza, which matters given how tight street parking gets once the crowd builds.
None of this is complicated, but it's the kind of thing that trips up someone showing up for the first time with a dog on a leash and nowhere to park.
Planning the Weekend Instead of Just Showing Up
Once you know the two days aren't interchangeable, the planning gets easier. If you've got young kids who'd rather build a cardboard fort or get their face painted than stand in a crowd for a parade, either day works fine since those activities run both afternoons. But if you're choosing based on what you actually want to see, Saturday is the day for the theatrical, costume-driven version of the fair, and Sunday is the day for the percussion and movement. Splitting your time, an hour or two each day rather than a full day on just one, is the move that longtime attendees tend to make once they've figured out the difference.
The Plaza itself changes shape for the weekend. Streets around the square shift into pedestrian space, the usual lunch spots get busier than normal, and getting across town on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon in mid-September takes longer than it would most other weekends. None of that is a complaint. It's just the texture of living somewhere that still throws a fifty-plus-year-old street fair every fall, drums and puppets included, without much fuss about it.
The fair's name comes from an old folk lyric about a place up north, and there's something fitting about that. Arcata in September, cool mornings giving way to the kind of sun that makes the Plaza worth standing in all afternoon, is exactly the kind of north country the song was written about. The fair just makes it official for one weekend a year.
If you're weighing a move to Arcata and want a clearer sense of what neighborhood life actually looks like here, including the events that shape the local calendar, Mike and Marci Pigg are happy to talk through it. Let's Connect.
