By Julia Capitelli
Sunday brought sunny weather with temperatures in the 70s for the North Shore Kiwanis Club’s 52nd annual Mini Mart, a collection of crafts vendors, restaurateurs and musicians who set up booths along Sea Cliff Avenue, the center of the one-square-mile Village of Sea Cliff.
Now in its second year since its Covid-19 hiatus, Mini Mart serves as the Kiwanis’s largest fundraiser of the year and this year attracted crowds to Sea Cliff Avenue throughout the day, with music and the smell of food and beer in the air.
Oyster Bay residents Jennifer and Glenn Hayes experienced their first Mini Mart with their two children. After learning about the event on social media, they decided to attend.
“It’s great. It’s a lot bigger than we expected,” Jennifer said. “There’s a lot more stuff to see and do.” The couple explored the different vendors and food options and tried some pumpkin beer, saying the vendors and beer tent were their favorites. “We think this is a great representation of local vendors, and it’s nice to see this many people come out,” she continued.
One such local vendor was jewelry designer Kathleen DiResta, owner of K. DiResta Collective. The jewelry shop where DiResta crafts and sells her work is located on Sea Cliff Avenue and features the work of other artists and artisans such as textile designer Kimberly Frost.
“People love that I’m local and they love that they’re meeting someone that lives in the community,” DiResta said. “And they appreciate that my work is a little more handmade and unique.”
DiResta has sold her jewelry at other street fairs but said Sea Cliff is different from the rest. It’s “so much more personal because I know so much of the crowd, and it’s friends and people that love my jewelry, so it makes it so much more special,” she noted.
“We think this is a great representation of local vendors, and it’s nice to see this many people come out.”
Jennifer Hayes on Mini Mart
The North Shore Kiwanis Club emphasizes the selection of quality area vendors. “We want first local, and then secondly handcrafted,” said Lisa Larsen Hill, co-event director.
Businesses located on Sea Cliff Avenue set up their own booths outside their stores, but other vendors were brought in as well. “I would say we had some really unusual new things,” Larsen Hill said. “We had about 40 new vendors and some very exciting things that happened.”
While not new to Mini Mart, owner Louise Polite of Sonny and Dew sold her all-natural hand-care products and beach art from her booth near Sunset Park. This is also the site of the bus stop for transportation to and from the event, so it was an ideal location for a vendor.
“We do quite well at Mini Mart,” Polite said. “We’re at a perfect location; we’re at the bus stop, so they see us when they come off and then they come back to us when they get back on.”
Sonny and Dew was started in 2013 by Polite after her father-in-law’s death. They had been partners in a hair salon.
Melissa Caldarise, who retired as a nutritionist with the Nassau County Department of Health, attended the event with her husband, Nick. The pair attend annually and said that they love listening to the bands and meeting friends. Even returning from abroad could not stop them from turning out. “We just got back from Italy two days ago. We’re jet lagged,” Caldarise said. “But we said we had to make it here.”
In the small Village of Sea Cliff, Mini Mart has become a sort of holiday. With multiple attractions to offer, the event draws in not only locals but also people from outside the community. Larsen Hill said there is a community-oriented feeling to it.
“When you walk up and down the street, people say, ‘Happy Mini Mart Day!’ That’s a vibe; it’s a community event,” she said. “I think people just feel it’s very intimate because you’re on a street that’s small, you have local vendors. People just are in a good mood.”
