The Week Ahead: Haddon Avenue Turns Into a Gallery

There’s a particular magic to mid-August in South Jersey. School hasn’t started, the tomatoes are perfect, and every downtown worth its salt is squeezing one more big weekend out of the summer before the calendar turns serious on us. This coming week is a good one, and it builds to a Saturday that gives you a genuine choice between art and lobster rolls — which, if you ask me, is the kind of decision we should all be lucky enough to face.

Haddon Avenue becomes an open-air gallery

Let me start with the one I’ll be at. The Collingswood Crafts and Fine Art Festival returns to Haddon Avenue on Saturday and Sunday, August 15 and 16, running 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. both days, and it’s free. For two days, the main drag of Collingswood becomes an open-air gallery — handcrafted pottery, blown and stained glass, jewelry, leatherwork, woodwork, paintings, photography, the whole spread. What I love most is the corner they call Emerging Artist Alley, where the people just starting out get real estate next to the veterans, with live musicians playing throughout. A good craft show isn’t a store. It’s a hundred small conversations with the people who actually made the thing in your hands. Bring cash, bring the kids for the family art activities, and give yourself permission to wander.

Or point the car down the parkway

If your taste on the fifteenth runs more toward butter than brushstrokes, the Shore has you covered on the very same days. The Surf and Turf Seafood Festival — billed as the Shore’s biggest seafood festival — is back for two days, August 15 and 16, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., with lobster rolls, crab cakes, shrimp and enough fresh seafood to justify the drive. It’s the kind of event where you eat standing up, get a little sun and regret nothing. An ambitious South Jersey family could do both — Collingswood in the morning, the Shore in the afternoon, and call the whole thing a Saturday well spent.

Those are the anchors, but the week leading up to them has its own quieter rhythm. Collingswood keeps its restaurants and sidewalks humming all week. Haddonfield, fresh off its own summer street festivities, settles back into the easy pleasure of its shops and patios along Kings Highway. And across the region, the farmers markets are at their absolute peak right now — Jersey corn, Jersey tomatoes, Jersey peaches all at once.

The best thing about a South Jersey August isn’t any single festival — it’s that you can walk out your door on almost any evening and find something happening within twenty minutes of home.Jenna Joy

Here’s my honest advice for the week: don’t over-plan it. The big weekend is coming on the fifteenth, and it’s worth circling. But the days in between are the point too. Sit outside. Say hello to the person making the thing you’re admiring. Let the summer take its time going, because it’s already halfway out the door. I’ll see you on Haddon Avenue.

Based on reporting from NJ 1015, Collingswood.com, Visit South Jersey, and New Jersey Isn’t Boring. Event dates and times are subject to change — confirm with organizers before you go.