Residents all around town were hanging out in their front yards on Tuesday night and getting to know their neighbors as part of the National Night Out celebrations.
National Night Out originally began in 1984 and involved 2.5 million neighbors across 400 communities in 23 states. Today, there are 17,000 participating communities across all 50 states, with Turlock joining in 2009. Aside from improving community and officer relations, National Night Out aims to promote a myriad of crime prevention efforts.
Queensland Avenue in northeast Turlock (whose residents renamed their roadway Main Street for the evening) were one of 27 registered block parties with the city of Turlock for Tuesday.
Queensland Avenue had all the things you would expect at a block party — a game of pickleball going on in the street, alongside two separate cornhole games, kids playing a water balloon tossing game and a large craft project set up. There was an ice-cream table with all the fixings, a taco station and even an adult-beverage buffet. Mayor Amy Bublak and the Turlock Police Department’s SWAT team also stopped by for a visit. But the most important activity happening on Queensland Avenue was the connections being made between neighbors.
Bob Rasmussen was the original coordinator of the Queensland Avenue NNO event — which after much discussion and debate among the neighbors, started either four or five years ago.
“We have such a great neighborhood here. I just felt this is a great opportunity to bring us out of our homes and from our garage doors being closed. I was encouraged the first year because we had a lot of people that came, and that fueled it to keep going, and now we’ve developed a team of eight or 10 people who help organize it,” he said. “Especially when society is so skeptical and divided now, we have to come together over food and games.”
Sheryl Preslan has lived on Queensland Avenue since 1995 and NNO is one of her favorite times of the year. She said that she gets to know everyone on the block, even though not too many move away or move in.
Mandy and David Hird have only lived on Queensland Avenue for five years, so they are relatively new. While David was playing an intense game of pickleball on the street, Mandy was serving up top-shelf adult beverages from their personal liquor stash. She said that NNO was important for “community building, meeting friends and neighbors and forming bonds, and just having a good time.”
While the families were playing games and the more seasoned residents were catching up with neighbors, Mario Quintana and his friends Tony Vargas and Alex Gonzalez were chatting over their dirt bikes and enjoying some fresh-made tacos.
Quintana who lives on Queensland said that it’s a great neighborhood.
“Everybody seems connected in some sort of way. Everybody knows each other. Everybody says ‘What’s up?’ to each other,” he said.
