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'A perfect six hours in Bluffton'

Bluffton Village Festival offers up food, art and ugly dogs

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Bluffton native Peter Hamilton and his wife, Brenda, host a barbecue for family and friends at their home every year during the Bluffton Village Festival.

The best part? They live right on Calhoun Street, where all the action takes place.

"I've traveled all over the world," Peter said. Other places sometimes looked like Bluffton, "but they ain't Bluffton," he said, standing next to the flaming grill and steaming seafood in his front yard.

This year marked the 30th anniversary of Bluffton's second-biggest festival, behind the Christmas parade. The party stretched from the Calhoun Street Promenade to the docks on the May River.

With humid weather and temperatures in the high 80s, some festivalgoers took to the breezy docks to escape the heat.

Samantha Soldano and her best friend Caitlin Buckalew, both fifth-graders at Hilton Head Island International Baccalaureate Elementary School, were among them.

The 11-year-olds shared a strawberry shortcake while playing with a dog named Blizzard. The girls already had been through a Calhoun Street art gallery.

"The artists were good," Caitlin said, but admitted her favorite part of the gallery was the air conditioning.

"It's burning hot up there (on the street)," Samantha added.

Next on the agenda?

"We might eat more food,"she said.

The had plenty of options.

Italian ice, snow cones and ice cream were popular. And of the course there were the staples: seafood, hot dogs and barbecue.

Live music at both ends of Calhoun Street throughout the day provided listeners with everything from rock to steel drums. Both local and out-of-town artists peddled their work, allowing for convenient, last-minute Mother's Day shopping. More than 90 vendors sold items that included stained glass, jewelry, paintings, pottery, copper sculptures and hand-crafted quilts.

A big part of the Bluffton Village Festival experience is the "Ugly Dog Contest." This year there were seven entries for three prizes -- hand-crafted trophies by Bluffton potter Jacob Preston.

Thumper, a Chinese crested with fur only on its head and tail, was the winner, said

20-year veteran judge Richard Coffield.

"It was pathetic-looking," he said, but he meant it in the nicest way.

Coffield said the pooch and its owner, H. E. McCracken Middle School sixth-grader Gwen Laizer, now have at least three winning trophies from the contest.

"The young lady was beautiful, but the dog was not," he said with a laugh.

Babbie Guscio, who started the festival 30 years ago and has organized it every year since, said this year's festival seemed to have attracted more people than ever before.

"A perfect six hours in Bluffton," she said. "Nothing could be better."

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