NEWPORT — Orange banners festooning the lampposts between City Hall and Equality Park herald the good news: The Broadway Street Fair is coming back after a two-year hiatus, complete with street vendors, live music and bicycle-mounted pie-in-the-face jousting.

Debbie Tungett Bailey, one of the main organizers of the fair, said this year’s event — slated for Saturday, Oct. 8 — would be scaled back compared to years past. There will be three stages for live music rather than five, and the street will only be closed off to cars from Equality Park down to Fastnet Pub, not extending down into Washington Square as it had previously. 

Previous fairs also included a “Beyond Broadway” beer garden featuring local brews and musical acts at the Great Friends Meeting House, which is not on the docket for this year.

However, there will be a lot of street vendors and a variety of musical acts spread across the three stages, and local business owners and employees are looking forward to the huge amount of foot traffic they had grown to expect over the course of the festival’s first four iterations.

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“Oh, you’ll see a lot of people out here — a lot of locals. Hopefully, we’ll put tables outside again, and we’ll see a lot of people we haven’t seen since the pandemic started,” said Dawn, a Newport local who has worked at Ben’s Chili Dogs for the past six years.

Ben’s might not get much attention from tourists who walk right past it to eat next door at Leo’s Market, but the local fixture has been slinging chili dogs on Broadway since 1969, and recently renovated and expanded its dining room. While the dogs are the top sellers, Ben’s also sells poutine and has soft serve ice cream all year round.

Dezna Bowen, owner of a Caribbean spot called Humming Bird,  popular for its jerk chicken, traditional Jamaican dishes like oxtail and varied seafood dishes, recalled her first Broadway Street Fair experience in 2018. Incidentally, it was also Humming Bird’s first day in business.

“It was a busy day," Bowen said. "We had no idea the fair was happening. We sold out of everything … This year we will do some grab-and-go meals, some breakfast sandwiches. We do Caribbean food, yes, but we mix it up, and we have food everybody can enjoy.”

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The first Broadway Street Fair was held in 2016 after the completion of the Broadway Streetscape project, which had a prolonged and negative impact on the shops and restaurants lining the street but resulted in a more pedestrian and business-friendly environment when all was said and done.

The idea behind the fair’s inception was to give Broadway businesses a boost, and it worked like a charm. The annual event has become a huge local draw, and business owners and residents alike were disappointed by two consecutive years of cancellations due to COVID-19.

A woman named Terry was behind the counter at Newport Marketplace & Antiques, a relatively new presence on Broadway peddling the wares of more than 30 vendors who used to sell their antiques at the Armory Antique Marketplace.

She explained this would be the first fair experience for the business, but mentioned she had worked the fair as a street vendor in years past and was looking forward to its return.

“We are so looking forward to the fair — it’s going to be great for our business,” said Terry. “It brings huge crowds — you’ll be dodging people the whole time.”

Melissa Seitz, the art director at Downtown Design, said she was looking forward to the fair and would have a tent out on the street alongside the other vendors in addition to her regular retail space on the corner of Broadway and Marlborough streets.

She said the studio and gallery, which sells art created by adults with disabilities in partnership with a nonprofit called Looking Upwards, would also be running an art bazaar event on Sept. 10.

In both instances, Downtown Design will use something that has been a business disadvantage in the past — a significant setback from the sidewalk in the form of a brick patio and courtyard of sorts — to run a variety of activities including some hand-painted photo stand-ins and interactive art projects.

“I think the Broadway Street Fair brought business to Broadway," said Seitz, who grew up in Newport and lives in Middletown. "There used to be empty storefronts, and now it’s getting harder to find a space … I think (the first year of the fair) was a big boon for Broadway, and then the next year it got even huger. It really blew up the second year.”

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Like Dawn at Ben’s Chili Dogs, Seitz noted how locally driven the fair is and said that holds true in general for the community on Broadway. She said the Broadway Street Fair has joined the yearly Harvest Fair at Norman Bird Sanctuary as a can’t-miss event for true locals.

“I love how local Broadway is — you’ll see all of your neighbors and old high school friends, the babies who were born and the kids who have grown older," Seitz said. 

According to the banners, the fair will be held Oct. 8 from noon until 6 p.m. However, Bailey indicated the fair would actually end at 5 p.m. in order to give the volunteer team more daylight hours to complete post-event cleanup.