Communiversity Draws Thousands

More than 40,000 people packed the streets of Princeton on Saturday for the 41^st Annual Communiversity Festival of the Arts.

The event, which celebrates both Princeton residents and Princeton University, featured more than 200 artists, merchants and local community groups and offered food and continuous live entertainment from noon to 5 p.m.

“Everyone is here and it’s really fun,” said Cathleen Mazzola, 14, of Princeton, who spent the afternoon enjoying the festivities with her friends.

Also at Communiversity was Diana Drake of Pennington, who said she has been coming to the event on and off for about a decade.

“It’s a beautiful day and it’s fun to walk through the streets of Princeton, enjoy the arts and crafts, the weather and my brother-in-law’s band ‘The Shaxe,’” Drake said.

Saturday drew more people into Princeton than last year, when police estimates put the number of attendees at 35,000.

The crowds of people along Nassau Street, Witherspoon Street and Palmer Square didn’t bother Jason Zhang, 24, a first-year graduate student studying electrical engineering at Princeton University.

The sheer number of people reminded him of his hometown of Beijing, said Zhang, a member of Princeton’s Chinese Student’ Association, which performed a costumed lion dance along Nassau Street in the morning.

The weather at Communiversity was cool but not cold and there was no sign of rain, much to the relief of Jeff Nathanson executive director of the Arts Council of Princeton, which organizes Communiversity.

“We feel extremely grateful for excellent weather and that all of our excellent partners put forth the effort to market the event.

It’s really a collective effort to let people know what’s going on and you see the result,” Nathanson said.