Showcase Past
In the few years I've been able to attend the Vine Street Victorian Showcase, one of our loveliest Paso Robles December traditions, there are certain Christmas displays I like to photograph year after year. One of these is the house that displays this train. I will show you more photos of this house below.
Other popular attractions are Scrooge's house, of course, and another is the home of the Grinch. These usually draw large crowds.
This is a video of the Grinch's 2010 performance.
If you can bear with me as I walk through the crowd to finally get close enough to catch Scrooge's 2010 performance, you can get a feel for what the audience eats up and responds to as Scrooge dishes it out.
One other house has also drawn me to it year after year. It is the house with the Christmas train. I have put a close-up of it taken in 2011 beside the first paragraph at the top. I wish I could put the rest of these photos side by side in a row, but I can't. So I will put them as you would see them left to right if you were standing in front of this decorated house. You can click each photo to enlarge it to see the details.
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| Close-up of Penguin Slide from First Photo, ©B. Radisavljevic |
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| Vine Street Decorated New Construction, 2015, ©B. Radisavljevic |
Showcase Present
Since this is one of my favorite displays, I was trying to find it on my walk this week. I knew approximately where it normally is, but it wasn't anywhere near there.
Finally, I got back to 14th and Vine, Scrooge's former home for the Showcase, and I talked to the owner of the house who was in the front yard and told her I was trying to find it. She solved the mystery for me. I discovered I had seen its place at the beginning of my walk and even photographed the house where it had been. Except now it is this new construction. Even so, it is decorated. I hope maybe the more spectacular display will be back next year. This was not the only new construction on the route of the Vine Street Showcase, but it's the most festive.
What is your favorite holiday tradition in your town?
That makes the displays around here look really boring. About the only place there are any Christmas lights worth seeing is at a couple of nearby casinos, but they're not as nice as what you've shown here.
ReplyDeleteThe Vine Street Victorian Showcase is a special 13-block area of a street where residents must decorate their homes in some way if they live there. There is a city-wide event on a Saturday night within two weeks of Christmas where musicians and carolers perform in different locations. We've had ice sculptors, wolves on display , a snow slide, free hot chocolate, popcorn, and cider, and lots of people during the hours of the event. The street is closed to cars and is mobbed by pedestrians. There's even a parade. It is the place people go expecting to see elaborate decorations. Most homes in other parts of the city don't have such elaborate displays, but one in my neighborhood does. I hope I'll be able to share what's there this year at some time before Christmas.
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