Cambria’s Pinedorado festival canceled due to COVID concerns — again
After months of research, work, passionate debate and several votes by the Lions Club of Cambria board, this year’s Pinedorado celebration has been canceled.
The decision to cancel Pinedorado, traditionally held Labor Day weekend in Cambria, will have rippling impacts on local residents and businesses that, after extremely difficult times during the pandemic, had recently begun to see a light at the end of the financial tunnel.
Lions Club board president Greg Aitkens said in a series of email and phone interviews that he regretfully recommended not doing Pinedorado this year, due in part to coronavirus pandemic risks and the alarming rise in local cases of COVID-19.
Nearly all of the club’s board members agreed, he added.
“I believe many local Lions and community members will be quite relieved,” Aitkens said. “We just cannot do this as safely as we would like!”
In an email to club members, Aitkens explained that “the COVID-19 variant is surging, even in (San Luis Obispo) County. Even with mega-mitigation efforts on our part to promote safety, we still don’t know if we’d be creating super-spreader events with the parade or the activities on the (Pinedorado) grounds.”
Decision to cancel Pinedorado comes after split vote
The agonizing conclusion to put Pinedorado on hold was finalized just two days after Lions Club directors, members and longtime participants met yet again to consider their options for continuing their commitment to the community.
In a tightly split vote, the club directors committed to go ahead with Pinedorado, but reduce the scale of this year’s event, which boasted the theme “Roaring Back.”
What changed their minds?
After the meeting, word spread quickly through the community that the parade and reduced gatherings at the downtown Pinedorado grounds were going to happen.
Aitkens wrote Saturday that almost immediately, club leaders heard from various community members who were concerned about different aspects of Pinedorado.
They “suggested we back down and not run it,” Aitkens said. “One person I spoke to .. said we would be nuts to operate Pinedorado this year.”
He noted that several other events in surrounding communities had been canceled.
Lions Club member Jim McPherson said that people who had already bought Pinedorado raffle tickets have two options.
They can hold onto their tickets, the registration stubs of which will be entered in the next Pinedorado raffle drawing — or they can contact him for a refund.
The Lions Club has long been concerned about the safety of holding Pinedorado in the midst of the pandemic. That’s why they canceled the 2020 event.
Earlier in the summer, the situation seemed hopeful.
The numbers of new local coronavirus cases, patients in hospitals and ICU beds had all declined, as had the number of new deaths due to COVID-19. Vaccination rates were good.
So Pinedorado planning kicked into high gear.
Locally, the number of new people getting COVID-19 vaccine shots slowed at about the same time the highly contagious Delta variant of the virus started showing up in San Luis Obispo Country. In recent weeks, the coronavirus case rate began to spike dramatically again.
Many youngsters aren’t yet eligible to receive COVID-19 vaccines.
Their safety — and that of other vulnerable attendees — has been a primary concern for the Lions Club throughout the planning process.
Aitkens wrote that he’d been told “our local school district ‘is advising that students not volunteer at Pinedorado or attend any large events.’ ” The Coast Unified School District asked clubs and teams to skip this year’s event, he said.
“This would mean no participation from any local school groups in our parade, no volunteers for the booths at the grounds and no football team coming over to help us set up and take down at the grounds.” he said. “Would we really want to run Pinedorado with no kids from our local community participating?”
“Our Pinedorado chairpeople are having trouble finding volunteers to run booths or activities” during the event, Aitkens wrote. “Some of the (event’s) chairpeople do not even want to be present at the grounds, to avoid exposure themselves. We’d even have to scramble to find volunteer sheriffs to help us with traffic control for the parade.”
Ultimately, the Lions decided they couldn’t put families, club members and other community members in the position of having to make those difficult choices.
Throughout the Pinedorado planning stages, the elephant in the decision room had always been the impact of COVID-19.
“This has been an incredibly difficult and challenging discussion for us as an organization” and as concerned individuals,” Aitkens concluded in his email to Lions Club members. “All else being said, I believe each of us truly wants what is best for our community and for our Lions Club going forward.”
“We had wanted to give our kids and their families the opportunity to socialize that they’ve all been wanting,” Pinedorado co-chair Andy Zinn said, “and to give them a sense that something’s more normal … It’s so difficult not to provide this to the community. It’s a multigenerational event. We’ve been doing it for 72 years.”
But the bottom line, he added, is safety.
“We don’t have the ability to provide the usual, happy time,” Zinn said. “We wanted to do something nice for the community, something normal. Sadly, this is not the right time to do it.”
Cambria Chamber of Commerce president reacts to cancellation
Mel McColloch was selected to be the 2021 grand marshal of the Pinedorado parade. He’s the longtime president of the Cambria Chamber of Commerce.
Not being able to fulfill that duty “is a disappointment, yes, but I’m also disappointed for our businesses … the restaurants, wineries, motels and shops,” McColloch said via phone. “They’ve had a hard year, and Pinedorado would have helped them significantly.”
He said the “chamber also was looking forward to helping the Lions and the community make this the big ‘comeback’ event for Cambria.”
But, McColloch emphasized, “that said, I certainly agree 100% with the decision to cancel Pinedorado this year. We’re going through some tough times, with a lot of disappointments for a lot of people until we get this thing (the pandemic) beat.”
“I’m optimistic that the rest of the year will be good, once we get past this surge” in COVID-19 cases, he added. “At the chamber, we’re going to continue to plan our car show and chili cook-off for Oct. 16. We’ll also have to make the decision at the last minute, probably by Sept. 20.”
Whatever happens, McColloch concluded, “We just have to keep trying.”
Anybody with questions can email Aitkens at greg.r.aitkens@gmail.com or leave a voicemail message at 805-203-6939.
Jim McPherson’s email address is spaguyjim@gmail.com.
This story was originally published August 15, 2021 at 9:55 AM.
