Click here to read about events planned for this Saturday’s on-campus Kaleidoscope festival.
Cal State Long Beach began publicizing its presence within the Long Beach community, opening the campus to the city for an open house event and celebrating academic pursuits and diversity of the CSULB campus in 1985.
Former CSULB President Stephen Horn established Kaleidoscope, which has become an annual event attracting nearly 30,000 community members of CSULB and the City of Long Beach.
This year’s Kaleidoscope festival is April 25 with fun from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Admission and parking for the festival are free.
Vice President of Student Services Doug Robinson sent out an e-mail to students encouraging their attendance.
“The Kaleidoscope Festival offers a fun-filled day for the whole family,” Robinson wrote in the e-mail.
Before Kaleidoscope was established, CSULB had 49er Days, the campus’ main event leading up to the switch to the community-oriented festival.
49er Days was a theme event with visitors wearing cowboy attire or traditional American Indian clothing while the campus was converted into a traditional Western gold-mining town to recreate the time of the 1849 California Gold Rush.
The 49er Days event died out in the 1980s. Horn then decided to call for a different kind of event to draw more members of the Long Beach community, and with the help of Leland Vail, who became the director of the festival, Kaleidoscope was born.
Now in its 22nd year — Kaleidoscope was cancelled in 1987 and 1993 due to budget cuts — the festival continues to grow, using more than 67 acres of campus, over 1,000 chairs and three miles of extension cords used to transform the campus for it’s annual open house.
The annual Push Cart Grand Prix has been a part of the Kaleidoscope festival since 2001. Teams comprised of members of the CSULB community will get together and bring their carts to Parking Lot 3 behind Brotman Hall, where the parking lot is converted into a race track.
The race is a bracketed event that lasts about four hours. The time is divided into preliminary races, or heats, quarterfinals, semifinals and the finals for the top two teams. The Push Cart Grand Prix is a competition for the fastest time. The cart with the fastest time will receive the speed award.
Other awards that will be given out include the spirit prize, which goes to the team with the most team spirit, enthusiasm and encouragement to others in the race. This award can also go to the team with the most crowd-pleasing cart.
The final award is the theme prize, given to the most creative cart and the team showcasing the most effort in their cart theme. A panel of judges will vote on the spirit and theme prizes.
The festival is also a way for CSULB alumni reconnect with former classmates and visit the campus.
For more information on Kaleidoscope, visit www.csulb.edu/kaleidoscope.