Katelin Reviews Rocester Lilac Festival 2025
The Lilac festival in Rochester is one of the largest local festivals, and the promise of gorgeous lilacs in bloom has always enticed me. This year my daughter was marching in the parade (sousaphone), and it was the perfect excuse to check it out.
On Saturday morning I took the first parking space I could find. It just so happened to be right near the Small Business Circle of the festival. I lingered at the small business booths a little longer than I should have. I laughed at a sign that said: “Hot Girls Buy Books.... From Indie Bookstores.”
You all know I love indie writers, but indie bookstores are also my favorite. I wanted to stay longer and look at all the books on display, but I did have a parade to catch. I kept moving and saw the beautiful reservoir that Clarence Amann highlights in his book “Highland Park Poems.” You can learn more about that gorgeous book in my blog "Meeting with the Perfect Print Shop."
Next, I walked down a street packed with Vendors. This is the “Art Park” section of the festival. I remember thinking, wow, this is pretty big. I stopped at a You-Are-Here type map to try and figure out the parade route in relationship to where I was standing, and let it sink in that this festival was MUCH bigger than I had originally realized, and I was nowhere near where I needed to be to see the parade. I put my feet into high gear and only slowed down to look at a fairy door vendor that was absolutely enchanting.
I made it to the parade route JUST in time and made a mental note for next year that I parked on the entirely wrong side of the festival. The Parade was packed with talented musicians. The best moment was when my daughter found me in the shoulder-to-shoulder crowd and lit up without breaking her marching posture. I saw a little finger wiggle wave meant just for me.
I took the walk back to my car through the Lilac gardens that smelled phenomenal. Now that I knew the layout of the festival, I made it back to Small Business Circle and went straight for the Indie bookstore. They displayed beautiful trunks full of mystery books. Dozens of books were wrapped in brown paper and wrapped in a way to make a pocket which had cute bookish stickers, a tea bag or espresso pouch and a slip with the mystery books genre and a brief description. I enjoyed reading many of the little descriptions and settled on a Fantasy Horror for my daughter and a Dystopian Fiction for myself.
As I purchased the books, I was able to meet the brilliant mind behind Victory Books: Jordan Ratzlaff. We enjoyed talking about books, small business, and the potential for collaboration. Jordon has pop-up book shops all over and I know chasing some of these will be in my future. If you would like to order from her or join me in the chase of tracking down her pop-up bookshops check her out her website: www.victorybooksroc.com
When I picked my daughter up after the parade, she was as excited as I was to open her mystery book. Both of us opened winning books. Neither of us had our fill of festival with just one day and went back on Sunday.
On Sunday, we spent the entire day walking through the festival twice. As we walked through the various parts of Highland Park, we counted the different types of flowers we saw. Including flowering trees and bushes, we made it to 35 types.
In my hurried fun on Saturday, I never entered the Main Festival. After a quick security check, we had access to the Main Stage music and more food vendors than I could count! We tried to pace ourselves on the food and tried beef jerky, lemonade, gyros and trash plates. My favorite was the trash plates. Rochester is the home of “Garbage Plates” mac salad, potatoes, and beans with cheeseburgers and hot dogs, covered in spicy meat sauce, pickles, onions, ketchup and mustard. Does it look good? Absolutely not? Is it one of my family's favorite dinners? Without question, yes! A Trash Plate was new to me as it was advertising healthy and nothing about a garbage plate is healthy. Well, the Trash plate has a foundation of sweet potatoes and coleslaw that is topped with grilled chicken, guacamole and a mother sauce drizzle. It was phenomenal and my new goal is to recreate this healthy version at home.
The game section was small, but the team there was amazing. They hooked us by letting my daughter play a free game. After seeing how much fun she had throwing darts at balloons and landing little basket balls into nets we traded twenties for big smiles and stuffed animals. After two full days of festival walking our tired feet walked us toward our car to go home. But we had one more stop! Victory books in the small business circle. Jordon’s stash of mystery books was almost gone, but we found two more mystery books to take home with us and have a great start to our summer reading stack.
