Tonight in Haddonfield, a 20th Birthday in Collingswood: The Calendar Just Got Loud

Clear your evening. Right now, tonight, downtown Haddonfield is about to turn into the kind of block-long party that reminds you why we bother living where the sidewalks are actually full of people.

The Summer Street Feast runs from 4 to 8 p.m. today along Kings Highway and the downtown blocks — food, music, and the easy, unhurried fun of a warm August night in one of South Jersey’s prettiest little towns. This is community arts at its most democratic: no ticket, no velvet rope, just a street closed to cars and opened to everybody, with live music drifting between the storefronts and the smell of somebody’s grill pulling you down the block. Bring the kids. Bring your appetite. Bring the neighbor who says there’s “never anything to do around here” and watch them eat those words next to a food truck.

A 20th birthday, nine days out

If tonight is the appetizer, mark your calendar in ink for the main course. The Collingswood Crafts and Fine Art Festival turns 20 this year, and the anniversary edition lands August 15 and 16, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., filling Haddon Avenue with the work of more than 190 artists from across the tri-state region and beyond. Twenty years — two decades of the same avenue transforming, one weekend a summer, into an open-air gallery you can walk through in flip-flops. We’re talking pottery and blown glass, turned wood and fine jewelry, garden art and photography, the kind of work that took someone years to get good enough to sell, laid out on tables you can reach out and touch.

Made to do a little good

The organizers understand that a great arts event feeds more than your eyes. There’s live music threading through the crowd, dine-as-you-stroll treats from visiting food vendors, and — this is the part that always gets me — free family art activities, so the kids aren’t just dragged along but pulled in. There’s even a tent of donated artwork, raffled off to benefit a local charity. For the collectors and the curious, artist receptions run August 15 from 5 to 8 p.m., a chance to linger after the crowds thin and talk to the makers when they’ve got a minute to breathe.

That’s not a consolation prize for people who can’t get to the city. That’s the real thing, made by our neighbors, for us.Jenna Joy

Here’s my honest take: South Jersey does not need to apologize to anybody for its arts scene. We have a downtown that shuts its street tonight to feed and entertain its neighbors, and a festival nine days out that’s been drawing 190-plus artists to a single avenue for twenty straight years. Go tonight. Go on the 15th. Support the people who make the stuff. I’ll see you out there.

Based on reporting from Collingswood.com, PhillyVoice, Patch, and Visit South Jersey. Event dates and times are subject to change — confirm with organizers before you go.