Apple Blossom Parade and Festival

By the morning of the parade, the curbs of Main Street in Sebastopol are lined with lawn chairs and blankets, many set out the night before. Trucks sit parked backward in the Safeway lot, facing the route. The city closes the cross streets and puts up detour barriers, and a military Honor Guard starts the parade down Main Street at High School Road at 10 a.m. From Analy High School the entries run the length of Main Street to south of the Post Office. It usually takes about two hours. The Sebastopol Times counted 14,000 parade watchers in 2025.

The parade is made of the town itself: marching bands and school bands, youth groups, homemade floats, commercial entries, classic cars, local fire trucks, and horses and llamas. The festival’s own notes ask that dogs at the parade be leashed because of the animals and the crowd. Entries compete for cash prizes and trophies. In 2026 the Analy High School marching band took first among high schools and Elsie Allen second. Brookhaven and Twin Hills placed among middle schools, Balletto Vineyards and Papas & Pollo among commercial floats, and the Girl Scouts and 4-H among youth organizations. At the end of the route, the fire trucks traditionally turn their hoses on the younger members of the crowd.

The 2026 parade was the 80th, and its theme was “The Blossoms of Oz.” Before it stepped off, Rollie Atkinson wrote in the Sebastopol Times that “according to pre-parade rumors,” the town was about to be “descended upon by wicked witches, living scarecrows, a cowardly lion or two, some silver-colored Tin Men made out of cardboard.” The grand marshal was Cynthi Stefanoni, the reigning Citizen of the Year, known for her work with the Sebastopol Documentary Film Festival. Teresa Ramondo, a Sebastopol native and former longtime chamber director, planned to ride as one of the wicked witches on the Western Sonoma County Historical Society entry. The parade went on as it always does, rain or shine.

Two stages in Ives Park

After the parade the crowd moves to Ives Park on Willow Street, where the festival runs from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday. It opens the night before. In 2026 a free Friday pre-party ran from 6 to 9 p.m. with food trucks and music, with Erica Ambrin at 6 and Gas Money at 7:30.

Music plays from two stages through both days and is included with admission. The Front Stage stands near the playground. The Back Stage is home to the summer Peacetown concerts. On the 2026 Saturday, School of Rock, The Apricots Band and Marshall House Project played the front, while David Luning, Sol Horizon and the Peacetown Allstars played the back. Sunday brought Swifty, a Taylor Swift tribute band with a sing-along, and a Porchfest showcase of local players: Lady Bloom, Bill DeCarli, Brittany Aquamarine, Pasaflora and Quami. Out back, Freestone Peaches, Poor Man’s Whiskey and Fleetwood Macramae closed the weekend.

“The food lineup this year is very rich and eclectic,” said Myriah Volk, executive director of the Sebastopol Chamber of Commerce. She listed lobster rolls, oysters, vegetarian dishes, ribs, beef and chicken barbecue, and kettle corn. Most of the 2026 vendors were local. The list included the HopMonk Tavern food truck, El Coronel, Sonoma Family Meal, Sonoma Chocolatiers, Laura’s Apples, Nellie’s Oysters, La Churroteka, Mr Dim Sum and Darlin’ Pop Soda Shop. Craft beer and local wine are sold to anyone 21 or older wearing the festival’s own wristband. Outside food and drink are not allowed in, and a city ordinance forbids drinking alcohol on Sebastopol’s streets. Arts and crafts booths share the grounds, selling jewelry, candles, knives, baskets, fiber work, flameworked glass and botanicals.

The children’s area offers a Mini Teacup Ride, the Bounty Pirate Ship, a Galloping Horse Ride, a Star Wars obstacle course, a Millennium Falcon playland and a SpongeBob toddler area, along with face painting, glitter tattoos, a selfie station and tie-dyeing. In the Sebastopol Center for the Arts on High Street, members of the Art Workshop of Western Sonoma County hang more than 100 original paintings, drawings and fine art photographs, ranging from rural landscapes to experimental abstracts. Nearly all of them are for sale, and visitors vote for a favorite. The show opens Friday evening with a free reception of wine, appetizers and music. Entry on the festival days comes with a festival ticket.

Nearly 100 chamber volunteers staff the gates, ID stations and booths. The 2026 T-shirts were designed by Patrick Amiot and Katie Kincade. The volunteers got a tie-dyed one of their own.

Snoopy, a cuttlefish, and Oz

Volk came to the chamber as its new director in 2023, and the Sebastopol Times reported then that the festival was “getting a long-overdue sprucing up.” That year’s theme was “Sonoma County Blossoms.” Ives Park was laid out like a map of the county, with a sign for each town. Snoopy led the parade on a fire truck, and Charlie Brown and Woodstock turned up at the festival. Imported goods were dropped from the craft booths in favor of local makers, and Screamin’ Mimi’s came back with ice cream sandwiches for the first time in about 20 years. The Community Voice put attendance at Ives Park at about 10,000.

For 2024 Volk chose “Blossoms in Wonderland,” after Alice in Wonderland. “I thought, how cool would it be if I could make the park somehow look like Wonderland?” she said. “And how do you pull that off?” Astrobotanicals lent 30 light-up sculptures, among them 10-foot mushrooms and a 35-foot cuttlefish with a DJ booth inside. That Sunday the Front Stage became an all-women’s stage, with Teresa Clark, Erica Ambrin, and the Bezhenar Sisters, Eleanor and Angelina. On Saturday Police Chief Ron Nelson took a pie in the face for charity. Stan Ramondo was grand marshal.

The 2025 festival, “Flower Power,” filled Main Street with vintage Volkswagen cars and buses. The original Big Brother and the Holding Company played on Sunday. Analy High School students drew the official poster, and Stanley Mouse, a Sebastopol resident who made his name in the 1960s with psychedelic concert posters for the Grateful Dead, drew an Apple Blossom band poster for the first time. Oz followed in 2026, which Volk described as “a whimsical layer of imagination.” The 81st festival is set for April 24 and 25, 2027, under the theme “Appily Ever After… A Sebastopol Fairytale.” It marks 125 years since the city incorporated in 1902.

Apple Shows and Apple Blossom Queens

The chamber traces the celebration to 1910, when the first Apple Shows capped the harvest “with all the excitement of a state fair.” The American Legion sponsored them first. Each year a few thousand freight-car-loads of apples were shipped from the district. The Sebastopol Area Chamber of Commerce later took over the shows. In 1947 George E. Keefe, Jr. originated the idea of a spring Apple Blossom Festival. The chamber’s own history says it has run “almost continuously” since then. The Sebastopol Times says the chamber has held it every year since 1947. Either way, it remains the chamber’s largest fundraiser, and in 2025 Volk put the chamber’s own age at 114 years.

Apple Blossom Queens were at first grade-school girls. Later the crown went to the high-school girl who pre-sold the most festival tickets. Ramondo remembers the pageant from her girlhood, when she marched in the parade as a Camp Fire Girl and a Bluebird. It was full of dance choreography and speeches. “The pageant was very popular,” she said. By 1965 the Sebastopol Apple Blossom Tour was listed among the country’s top 20 April events in ratings from the National Association of Travel Organizations. According to the chamber, apples are no longer Sebastopol’s largest industry.

Rails down the middle of Main Street

Linda Pellascini and her husband Richard founded the Apple Blossom Parade in 1968. She rode near the front of the 2025 parade as that year’s Citizen of the Year. The route and setup still used were first organized that year, when train tracks still ran down the middle of Main Street. The early parade ran the other way, starting south of downtown and ending at Analy High School. Band members, horse riders and big-wheeled farm tractors all had to keep from catching in the rails and cutaways. A photograph from 1968 shows the Apple Blossom Queen and her court on a float. The last rails came out in 1983.

Ramondo’s mother worked at the Medico Drug store on Main Street, which sold a great deal of film on parade day. “Those were the days—even though some people today might think of it as hokey,” Ramondo said. As chamber director she drove the route before dawn. “For me, riding down the parade route at 6 a.m. and seeing all those chairs set out on the curbs and the trucks parked backwards from the night before in the Safeway parking lot, anticipating the parade, was always my most satisfying moment of every year,” she said. “It showed what all our year’s work and effort and volunteer hours were really about.” Then she added: “It’s still what it’s all about.”