For one weekend in July, nearly 300,000 people are expected to head to Whiting for a lighthearted taste of Slovak and Polish culture.
Pierogi Fest, a three-day festival celebrating the town’s ethnic food and heritage runs from July 28 to 30 on 119th Street in Whiting, a town of 5,000.
It has a well-earned reputation for flamboyance including a colorful Friday parade that draws up to 100,000.
Events on Saturday and Sunday range from a charity nun-dunking contest benefiting St. Joseph’s Carmelite Home in East Chicago to a team of volunteer buscias jokingly pushing liquor as the secret to good cooking during tongue-in-cheek culinary demonstrations.
This year, the fest will have 20 to 24 vendors selling pierogi ranging from traditional cheese, meat or potato to cajun or gourmet varieties.
And there will be more than pierogi, with food stands serving the beloved Polish egg noodle and cabbage dish haluski, a traditional stuffed cabbage dish called halupki, sausages and various non-Slavic foods.
“We make sure that we always add that little touch, if you will, of ethnicity, in whatever we do,” said festival Chairman Tom Dabertin.
Other popular staples of the festival include the pierogi toss, Slovak dancers, polka, contemporary live music, pierogi-eating contest, Mr. Pierogi Songfest, karaoke with Mayor Joe Stahura, and arts and crafts.
Dabertin, one of the festival’s founders, dons his traditional coconut bra and grass skirt for the Friday night parade, inspired by a dare years ago.
“Once I wore it, it has become a tradition,” he said.
This year, organizers plan to add another sound stage — totaling five — and to expand hours for a part of the beer garden and a wine and cheese garden called “Wine O Cheese Garden: You decide.”
The festival will also offer more family-friendly options including relocating and expanding a children’s area and adding attractions meant to appeal to children between ages 9 and 14, Dabertin said.
New food vendors this year will add “New Orleans-type” food, Mexican cuisine, Puerto Rican cuisine and deep-fried dessert, he said.
Now in its 23rd year, Pierogi Fest began as a way to poke fun at Whiting’s strong and proud immigrant roots, Dabertin said.
It was a loving “salute to the old times in the community growing up in the ’50s and ’60s,” where he said he would see babushkas (grandmothers) cleaning in their house dresses and men mowing the lawn with “a mismatch of dress attire” after church.
In the late 1800s, Standard Oil drew workers from Chicago and surrounding areas and coal miners from as far away as Pennsylvania seeking good paying jobs, said John Hmurovic of the Whiting-Robertsdale Historical Society.
“When the refinery came, it was a boom town. Among those who came were a bunch of people primarily from Eastern Europe, although they came from everywhere,” he said.
“There were a lot of Slovaks, that was the primary group that settled in Whiting,” Hmurovic said. “They all flocked to it because there were jobs available.”
By 1920, the U.S. Census estimated the majority of the town’s 10,000 population, was either foreign-born or first-generation.
“When I was growing up, going to church, I remember the old Slovak women — the generation of my grandparents, basically” would be at the iconic, towering St. John the Baptist Catholic Church, attending 7 p.m. Mass while praying over rosary beads in their native language, said Hmurovic, 64.
“I recall the sound of that,” he said. “It looked very much and sounded very much like a foreign community.”
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Pierogi Fest
119th Street, Whiting
Hours: 11 a.m.-11 p.m. July 28-29; 11 a.m.-5 p.m. July 30
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