Coast Festival to Close 2 Miles of Santa Monica Streets on September 15th 2019

The City Sponsored Coast event will be held on two miles of city streets closed to car traffic, including Ocean Avenue from Wilshire Boulevard to Colorado. City press release follows.

Santa Monica's free open streets celebration, COAST, returns on Sunday, September 15 featuring people-powered transportation, art, and imagination. Two miles of Santa Monica's streets will be closed to cars and filled with a pageant of crowd-sourced creativity in addition to live music, food, art, and hands-on activities. COAST invites people of all ages and abilities to bike, skate, scoot, run, walk and roll along the event route.

COAST creates a car-free public space that allows the community to experience our streets as places for community and creativity, not just for cars. Whether painting a communal mural, jumping double-dutch or roller skating together at the pop-up rink, the route will be filled with all kinds of opportunities for participants to jump in and try out. Santa Monica's streets, sidewalks and iconic landmarks will pop with the color and sounds of musicians, dancers, and artists including Sol e Mar, Venice Beats, Mariachi Linda Mexicanas, Cuñao and the California Feet Warmers. Other activities include helmet decorating, a kid's bike skills rodeo, a giant puppet parade, and salad-making at the community garden.

This year, attendees aren't just invited to COAST, they're invited to Be Part of COAST! And there are many ways to participate. Create or decorate your favorite (real or imaginary) car-free way to get around and then show it off during this carnival of wheels, rigs, wings, and feet. DIY or join one of over a dozen free artist-led workshops that will be held pre-COAST from August 29 until September 14.

The workshops will provide inspiration and materials to create costumes, walking pieces, or wheeled art to strut on event day. From family-focused events to happy-hour workshops, resources will be available for all to generate human-powered transportation art. Contemporary visual artist Marianne Sadowski, puppeteer Beth Peterson, and cardboard sculptor Kiel Johnson are a few of the artists that will guide participants in transforming their ideas into a costume, hat or helmet, giant puppet or wheeled conveyance, or anything else they can imagine. There will also be day-of workshops for people to join in the fun and pageantry.

On event day, attendees are invited to ride or roll throughout the two miles of open streets and show off their creations, check out what others created or just come and enjoy. Attendees can enter the COAST contest to win prizes in six entry categories around innovation, creativity, teamwork, and how people-powered it is.

COAST will be held on two miles of city streets closed to car traffic, including Ocean Avenue from Wilshire Boulevard to Colorado, Colorado from 5th Street to Ocean Avenue, as well as Main Street from Colorado to Pier Avenue.

Attending COAST just got easier this year with the exciting offer of free rides on all Big Blue Buses across all routes the entire day of the event. COAST visitors are encouraged to walk, ride the Expo Line, Metro Buses, free Big Blue Buses, scoot, roll or take advantage of Santa Monica's 110 miles of bikeways. At the event, the route is open to every method of car-free transit including walking, wheelchairs, skateboards, feet or other wheeled devices. Bike rentals will be available at multiple locations along the route as well as at the 85 Breeze Bike Share stations located throughout Santa Monica. Free bike valet will be provided at the Farmers Market at Ocean Park and Main Street.

For more information about COAST visit http://www.santamonica.gov/coast or like COAST on Facebook and follow along on Twitter and Instagram. #CoastSaMo

COAST, September 15, 10 am - 4 pm Free pre-event artist-led workshops, August 29 - September 14