The 35th annual National Shrimp Festival takes place today through Sunday. The National Shrimp Festival is of the country's premier outdoor festivals. The festival features an international marketplace where over 300 vendors will show and offer fine art, arts and crafts, and all manner of shrimp.
Yes, shrimp! Fried, grilled, broiled or steamed, any way you like it, and every way you'll love it. You will find it all at the festival along with other delicious seafood and non seafood dishes.
The 35th National Shrimp Festival takes place at the Gulf Shores Alabama Public Beach.
Shrimp festival opens today; huge crowds expected
Booths to feature dozens of food vendors, hundreds of artistsGULF SHORES -- With white sand and Gulf waters as a backdrop, artists, cooks and volunteers moved over the public beach boardwalk Wednesday making last-minute preparations for today's start of the National Shrimp Festival.
The annual festival, born here in 1971, continues through Sunday on the boardwalk at the end of Alabama 59. Activities will be under way from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. today through Saturday and 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday.
"It's a good show because of the support not only of the people in this area, but we have customers from Birmingham, Atlanta, New Orleans showing up," artist Chris Hartsfield said as he unloaded some of his watercolors Wednesday.
Hartsfield, who has lived in Daphne since Hurricane Katrina destroyed his Pass Christian, Miss., home a year ago, said he has displayed art at the event since 1988 and his mother, artist Judy Hartsfield, offered her works at the festival from 1972 until the late 1990s.
"The show has changed a lot. I remember when they used to have the parade on Saturday morning and right after that, we'd get a mob of people coming through here," he said.
After two years of hurricanes, the 2006 festival concludes a summer of calm tropical weather on the Gulf coast.
In 2004, the festival had to be canceled after Hurricane Ivan came ashore in Gulf Shores on Sept. 16, three weeks before the 33rd annual event.
Steven Dark, a Gulf Shores pottery sculptor, said this year's festival is a chance for artists who lost touch during the hurricanes to get together again. "You see people you don't see at any other time of year and we're expecting people we haven't seen since Katrina," he said.
As he unpacked, Dark showed a small whimsical piece he said he created just for the festival: pottery shrimp with wings. "Shrimp angels," he said, laughing.
Dark said he has been exhibiting at the festival since about 1992. Read more