Still plannin' on Draggin' June 20

CLOVIS — The annual Draggin’ Main festival has become as much a part of Clovis as Wildcat football, windy springs and friendly people.

Every year’s festival brings out the locals and brings in the visitors, and they come together to celebrate Clovis’ heritage along with some great music. Last year, Loverboy highlighted an array of performers, the year before, Warrant.

But 2020 is not at all like “every year.” COVID-19 has seen to that, with schools and some businesses closing, and yes, even good ol’ Draggin Main being affected. Most of the festival — including the crux of it, the concerts — has been canceled.

But, it’s not all bad news for Draggin’ Main fans because the Main Street Cruise is still on. It could perhaps include face coverings and rubber gloves, but attendees should be ready to cruise.

“So June 20, the cruise is happening, we’re going to be down there, and we want you guys to come out and cruise with us,” festival committee member Gene Porter said on Facebook. “Bring your hot rods, bring your mini-vans. We don’t care, we just want you there. … But understand that we’re going to have to honor the rules of the state.

“You can park and you can do all those things,” Porter added in the Facebook message, “but if you’re exceeding the number that the state has set for us — meaning that if it’s five at that point — if you guys have more than five in your group, you’re going to cause trouble. … Guys, listen. This event is big, and it puts a black eye on us if we don’t handle ourselves correctly.”

Fingers are crossed that the attendees will abide by the state’s public health orders.

“We feel they can pull up in cars, they can park and visit with each other,” Porter told The News on Monday night. “We really hope that they don’t gather in any large groups, but that remains to be seen. We hope that they’ll adhere to the guidelines. I suspect that they will find places to park where they can talk to each other, talk to each other through the windows. We will see if that happens or not.”

Porter said there are no scenarios he can think of where there will be crowds that present a health risk, and is expecting the event to go smoothly.

“Every year the city does a great job of having law enforcement in a position to handle any issues,” Porter said. “We’ve been pretty successful over the last seven or so years; we haven’t had any issues. We believe that’ll be the case this time. Law enforcement in Clovis does a really good job. Often times they’re partnering with the sheriff and state police, so we suspect that’ll be the same this time.”

As far as money spent, Porter said organizers are OK.

“We had delayed spending any marketing merchandise money,” he said. “We will spend a little bit of marketing money already at hand, but it’ll be a drop in the bucket to what we had budgeted. So financially we’re in really, really good shape.”

And the hope is that next year will be normal, or close to it, and the 2021 Draggin’ Main Festival will be the best ever.

“That’s our plan,” Porter said. “We want to make it the biggest one we’ve ever done. We’re already working on plans for that.”