carnival

When Batavia native Jason Norton returned from a life out west with wife Michelle, they had a goal in mind to live in a more rural environment and slower-paced country life.

After settling into their first home, the couple spotted a cow in a neighboring yard. Rural it was.

“We’re home,” Jason said.

That was in 2000. Zoom ahead to this year, and they have been pastors of Everpresent Church at 4 Batavia City Centre for five years. Although most churches suffered loss of attendance due to COVID’s shutdown, the Nortons feel blessed that their small congregation was able to withstand the parameters of social distancing and only closed for 11 weeks.

The couple — and parents to 6-year-old Camilla — are in rebounding mode. Michelle said that some statistics show that 50 percent of the people that stopped going to church during the pandemic haven’t returned. She and Jason are “very community oriented” and family-friendly. The non-denominational, Bible-based church has previously been involved in outreach and she wants to resume those efforts.

The church will be hosting an event, Fun in the Son, catering especially to children with 10 carnival-like games; facepainting; a petting zoo with bunnies, a goat, chickens and ducks; bounce houses; a basket raffle; and hotdogs, chips, pop, snow cones and waffle cakes.

It will run from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. July 16 in the parking lot at Alva Place and Bank Street.

“It’s our way to get back out to the community,” Mrs. Norton said. “We're very family oriented. We are very kid oriented. And we just wanted to create this event to bring families back out together, because I noticed the community has a lot of things for adults, but not a whole lot for families together.”

A sheet of 25 tickets is $5, and kids can throw axes — little plastic ones that stick to the target — get a ping pong ball in a cup and other similar games. The sheet also includes a raffle ticket for each a girls and a boys bicycle. Other prizes will be given away throughout the day, such as gift cards to McDonald’s, Subway and Pizza 151.

Every child is to get at least one small prize, Michelle said, and those collected prizes can be turned in for bigger prizes.

This will be a church event that’s not so much about church, or preaching, she said. Fun in the Son is an opportunity for people to meet and get to know the Nortons and their church family, she said. Jason added that many events of the past are no longer around — St. Joe’s parade and carnival, and other town and village fundraising events — and he’d like to see activities return for families to enjoy.

Proceeds from the event will go to support “much-needed building repairs” at the church.

“Our church needs a new heating unit. And so we're doing a fundraiser,” Michelle said. “Whether we make money or we break even, it doesn't matter, because, like I said, we want to do it anyways for the community.”

The congregation has 35 to 40 members, and the Nortons would like to see it grow. They offer a Tuesday prayer service, Wednesday Bible study and Sunday service. Everpresent’s mission is “to foster an atmosphere of genuine love, where people can encourage one another and grow in their gifts and talents.”

“We love our community,” Jason said. “We just really want our community to know we’re here, and there will be a blessing.”

For more information, go to Everpresent Church. 

Submitted photo of Pastors Jason and Michelle Norton and their daughter Camilla.

A sunny Saturday brought out folks to eat, drink and be merry for the first-ever Eli Fish Carnival in downtown's Jackson Square, Batavia. The event included the brewery company's special craft creations and restaurant favorites, Matty's Pizza slices, live music, vendors and a guest with a few tricks up his sleeve, photo below. 

The Stafford Carnival is this weekend. It actually kicks off Thursday at 6 p.m. and at 9 o'clock the Guy Smiley Bands provides live music.

On Friday, there's a fish fry at 4 p.m., carnival opens at 5 and the parade starts at 7 o'clock. Music by Taran begins at 9.

Saturday's festivities begin at noon, with a garden tractor pull at 1 o'clock. Music provided by Monkey in a Bottle at 7, followed by Under the Gun at 9. There will be fireworks at 10 p.m.

Then on Sunday, Father's Day, the fun starts anew. Chicken BBQ will be available for sale starting at 11:30; the carnival opens at noon. Branded will perform at 1 p.m.; Divided by Zero at 4 p.m. and the Corvette Raffle -- or $50,000 cash -- winner will be drawn at 8 p.m.

Don't miss out on what promises to be a great time and be sure to bring Dad.

All proceeds benefit the Stafford Volunteer Fire Department.

Saturday proved to be a pleasant day as carnival-goers gathered at the Annual Stafford Fire Department Carnival, Main Street, Stafford. This long-standing tradition is the largest fundraiser of the year for the department. Festivities continue throughout the day this Father’s Day.

Here's photos from yesterday's Stafford parade and carnival. The carnival continues today and tomorrow.

To purchase prints of these photos, click here.

Uncooperative witnesses and a victim who doesn't want to press charges means there will likely be no arrests stemming from a fight at the downtown carnival Saturday night, according to Sgt. John Peck of the Batavia Police Department.

The 19-year-old victim is a GCC student from Utica.

When police arrived on scene at 9:59 p.m., there was a group of 10 or 12 people piled onto the victim, who was having a seizure, Peck said. Some of the people involved in the melee were trying to help the victim, other people where trying to pull them off. The first concern, he said, was to deal with his seizure.

"It was pretty chaotic," Peck said.

The victim, a black male, was taken by ambulance to Strong Memorial Hospital as a precautionary measure, but it turns out he was not seriously injured, Peck said.

"It probably looked worse than it was," he said, describing the injuries as just a couple of bumps and bruises.

All of the suspects are black males, Peck said.

On Saturday night, several witnesses promised to show up at the police station on Sunday to give statements, but none of them showed up.

That night there were also white youths seen running from the carnival down Ellicott Street. Police pursued them, but were unable to apprehend them. One of the youths dropped a knife.

But, Peck said, it appears none of those youths were involved in the carnival fight and police don't know why they fled the scene.

There was a report of a second fight by the big slide, but when State Police arrived to check out the report, no fight was in progress.

The cause of the fight appears to be something someone said to another guy's girlfriend, Peck said.

In all, five Batavia patrol units, two Sheriff's units and two State Police units responded to the reported fights.

Police have responded to a report of a fight at the carnival in downtown Batavia.

When the first unit he arrived, the officer reported "quite a fight." He immediately called for an ambulance for a person having a seizure.

A subject was reportedly seen fleeing west on Ellicott Street and crossing the street toward Della Penna's. Police are looking for two white males, with one wearing a white T-shirt.

UPDATE 10:04 p.m.: One of the subjects who fled reportedly dropped a knife. A second fight has reportedly broken out. Two State Police units have been called in to back up Batavia Police.

UPDATE 10:11 p.m.: Mercy EMS was requested to check on a male down behind Alberty's. He reportedly has a head laceration. There is also a report of "all suspects are black males." It's unclear if that's related to all fights or just one of the fights.

UPDATE 10:29 p.m.: One patient transported to UMMC. Police units going back in service. 

UPDATE 8 a.m. Sunday: Reader Adam Lowder submitted the photo above. His description of events follows after the jump:

Adam Lowder's description of events:

I was at the carnival when the fight took place, and I have attached a photo of the aftermath.

First off I would like to say that this carnival was just plain disgusting. The majority of the ride attendants I witnessed were interacting with the patrons; using foul language, leaving their stations for minutes at a time, and one was even smoking a swisher sweet style cigar that he passed to a young patron to hold onto and smoke for a few minutes.

There were groups of unsupervised middle-school aged kids all over.

We were getting ready to leave around ten o'clock when I saw the ride attendant from the “vehicles that go in a circle” kids' ride (black male 20's red hat with goatee) wrap his arms around a black male, belly to belly, and slowly but forcefully push him across the grounds. The attendant was making statements along the lines of, "just leave" and the male being forced back was saying, "did you hear what he said" repeatedly.

After a minute of this and after a few other people involved yelled towards the two men, the ride attendant in red let go of the male who took off towards Jackson St. Seconds later a group of people (prominently if not all black males) took off running in the same direction.

Ten to fifteen seconds later a few more males ran passed me in the same direction. That is when I saw a crowd of observers gathering on Jackson St. and people screaming and yelling.

As I approached the area, I could see a large group of people involved in physical actions (some jumping around, some swinging their arms, some taking pictures with their phones) in the middle of the street.

An officer in a SUV pulled up with his lights flashing and the group quickly scattered. A few more police cruisers quickly arrived on the seen. I did not see the police apprehend any of those involved, or really even attempt to do so. They all came to the man that was left lying in the middle of the street.

A few minutes later, two of the cruisers rushed over towards Rt. 63, and one stopped next to the Salvation Army.

One thing that I am certain of is that some of the ride attendants were involved in this. The one that I mentioned earlier who was smoking the cigar was in the group that ran past me. He was a black male wearing a Kobe Bryant Lakers jersey, and he was running the “Rio Grande Train” kids’ ride.

I stopped to snap this photo as I walked back to my car parked across from O’Lacy’s Bar.

At this point, the injured male was still lying in the road, paramedics had arrived, there was a crowd of people watching, and a couple of officers were standing near the victim watching.

The Downtown Batavia Carnival continued on Saturday, so we have more pictures from this afternoon. Sunday is the final day and it runs from 1 to 5 p.m.

More pictures after the jump:

Thank you to an anonymous friend who sent us this link to a page of photographs taken at St. Joe's Parade this past weekend. We were unable to make it to the festivities, so we're grateful that someone else took the initiative to document the occasion and get us involved in sharing the experience.

In fact, this is a perfect example of how the community can help make its own news. We're here to get the ball rolling, but this project we call The Batavian really works best with your participation.

I've tacked up a couple photos to the post here. For now, you can see the rest at the photographer's Flickr site. Hopefully, we'll get all of the photos loaded into our own account so you can access them with a simple click of the Photos button up near the top of the page.

If you have some photos of Batavia that you would like to share with your fellow residents, please don't hesitate to drop us a line. As always, I can be reached at philip (at) thebatavian (dot) com.