BETHLEHEM, Pa. — When she learned rain was forecast for the official opening of Musikfest, Christie Vymazal reacted as she always has.
Not with an umbrella, but a shrug.
“I never worry too much about it,” the Canadian and co-owner of Flying V Poutinerie said on Friday evening at her food stand on the North Side.
“Most people are going to show up for Musikfest regardless. That’s been my experience in the time we’ve been here.”
Brief but heavy mid-afternoon rain scared away organizers of the opening ceremonies scheduled for Service Electric Festplatz.
Those opening ceremonies will now be held — get this — during closing ceremonies on Sunday, Aug. 11 at 11:30 a.m.
But as Friday’s dinner hour approached, the skies brightened and smiled a serene pastel blue above a concourse teaming with Musikfest-goers.
“Rain is never going to stop ’Festers from coming out."Shannon Burkhardt, an employee at Greek Street.
“It’s going to take more than a shower to keep me from this,” said Ginny Rodgers of Allentown. “There’s just too much fun here to stay home.”
Several vendors on the North Side echoed Vymazal’s positive outlook regarding the possibility of poor weather leading to poor attendance and poor sales.
“Rain is never going to stop ’Festers from coming out,” said Shannon Burkhardt, an employee at Greek Street. “There’s just so much fun here not to come because it might rain.
“We never worry too much about how it might impact business. We know that lots of people plan their vacations around Musikfest.”
From both near and far.
Burkhardt has family that come to the festival from their home in Clearwater, Fla.
“If they couldn’t find hotel space — rooms go pretty fast when the Musikfest dates are announced — they’d drive their RV up from Florida and stay at a campsite and stay all 10 days,” she said.
Rain finds Musikfest the way a dog finds that microscopic scrap of food that fell off the dinner table. Wet weather has dampened the festival several times the past few years.
And the forecast for Saturday and Sunday calls for a 50 percent chance of rain.
But as both Vymazal and Burkhardt noted, bad weather hasn’t translated into bad business. Musikfest attendance records have been set the past two years, with more than 1.3 million frequenting the festival last year.
In fact, the only impact the rain had on Pat’s Pizza owner Yianni Kyziridis came only after the storm passed.
“I was putting up lights and got soaked when the water came off the top of the tent,” he said, pulling at the bottom of a drenched T-shirt adorned with a photo of late Italian siren Sophia Loren.
A Musikfest vendor for a fourth year, Kyziridis said he doesn’t worry too much about rain keeping customers away and cutting into his profits from which, he said, 32 percent go to ArtsQuest, the festival organizing agency.
Conversely, Kyziridis believes a brief rain before Musikfestivistes ramp into high gear can cool down the oppressive temperatures and make for a more pleasant experience.
“We’re going to be here because we are local and we support ArtsQuest,” he said. “And I believe the people will be here too.”
For complete information about the 11-day festival, go to https://www.musikfest.org/
