We certainly love a good festival! And coming up next week, West Bend, Wisconsin's Regner Park is home to two great festivals.

German Night is a celebration of German food and culture will be coming to Regner Park on Wednesday, July 13. The event starts at 5:30 p.m. and features music by the River City Blaskapelle starting at 5:30 and Until Dawn from 7:30-10:30.

Then, just a few days later, Regner Fest takes place at, you guessed it, Regner Park. Friday night, July 15, the fun starts at 4 p.m. with music from Bella Cain at 7:30. Saturday, June 16, there are a ton of fun activities for the kids following the Dirty Ninja Mud Run and then music from Buckshot from noon-4 p.m.

Both German Night and Regner Fest are put on by West Bend Friends of Parks & Recreation, an organization that helps supplement West Bend's Parks & Rec department in order to make our West Bend parks beautiful above and beyond what's possible on a municipal budget.

Lori Yahr from Friends of West Bend Parks & Rec joins me on this episode to talk about German Night, Regner Fest, and some of the other great things the organization does for our area parks.

If you'd like to volunteer, contact Lori Yahr at loriyahr@gmail.com.

Mentioned in this episode:

• Regner Fest (Facebook event details)
• German Night (Facebook event details)

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Fuzz Martin 0:00

Fuzz Martin 1:27

All right, Lori, you're back. You're my third time guests on the show. So County Executive Schoemann has been on twice and West Bend administrator Jay Shambeau. And now you're in good company. So welcome back.

Lori Yahr 1:38

Well, awesome. Third in line. Yeah,

Fuzz Martin 1:42

yes, exactly. It's gonna be one of those where I'll get like a like on Saturday Night Live where you get a jacket after you've been on here five times, I think. Oh, fantastic. Yeah, let's work on that. So you're previously on episode 19. With me we are talking about Enchantment in the Park, which you're heavily involved with. And now we're here on episode 49. And we're talking about another thing at Regner Park. But specifically, we're talking about friends, West Bend, Parks and Rec. And first of all, how have you been since last?

Lori Yahr 2:08

I've been fantastic. had had twin granddaughters. Oh, wow. All good with that. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Yep. Go see him. And they live in San Francisco. So I've been out there twice. Oh, probably getting another plane ticket on the way.

Fuzz Martin 2:19

Awesome. Yeah. That's really cool. Congratulations. And then can you talk to us a bit about the organization's of Friends of West Bend, Parks and Rec? What does that organization all entail?

Lori Yahr 2:28

Yes, yes, it is different than Enchantment in the Park. A lot of people think that we're one in the same and we're part of the city we're really not we are Enchantment in the Park is its own LLC and West Bend Friends of Parks and Rec is its own LLC. Also, we are a group of people, not a very big group for all we do. But we're a group of people that get together and we run festivals in the summertime to make money for the West Bend park systems. Okay, and we get a list from the parks every year. What do you need? What do you want outside of the city budget, the city budget only goes so far. So it works well for us to raise money for them and they let us know what where the need is.

Fuzz Martin 3:06

Okay, so then the reason behind doing that is to help improve our parks and recs in the area. Which given the name of the 501(c)3 to think that it would be pretty evident Yeah, didn't take me too long to put all those together. Who is all involved with the organization?

Lori Yahr 3:24

We have a board of directors there's 10 of us all together I'm actually a consultant for the board the board is I'm not on that board Okay, they're pretty much my bosses I present things to them and they're the final say in what we do and what we don't do a great group of people from all different walks of life but it's really just people mainly that have a strong interest in the park systems or that are that want to help raise the money for the park system and And there I've never had trouble I never have trouble getting board members and I never have trouble getting volunteers for our events because West Ben's got a beautiful park system that doesn't happen by itself it needs help so it everybody's on board for that

Fuzz Martin 4:02

yeah definitely a great park system here and lots of great places to go and recreate with family and love that we have that central like Regner Park is that like big central park here in West Bend that that people go to in all the different events are held here. And things are constantly improving there. So can I ask you personally what you're involved with a lot of things so what what makes you get involved with with things like friends West Bend, Parks and Rec and Enchantment than some of these other things you're involved with.

Lori Yahr 4:30

I used to work for the West Bend park system. I was with the city for 22 years, decided I wanted to retire big I was tired of the day to day going in eight hours a day, whatever, whatever more than that, but I still wanted to be involved and and you know, just because you're retired doesn't mean you're done doing things and I was looking for something that would help the community let me still kind of in charge person. So let me still be in charge and still work with a great group of people and this really fit the need. So it's it's a lot of work. But I have a lot of help and it runs very smooth. Yeah.

Fuzz Martin 5:02

And you can still skip off to San Francisco when you need. That's exactly right. So friends of West Bend Parks and Rec recently had the beer garden at Regner Park. How did that go?

Lori Yahr 5:13

Oh, it was fantastic. Yep, we have that Eric Diamond. He's the Neil Diamond guy on Friday night. We just kept keep getting bigger and bigger with him. He's just fantastic to listen to and enjoy. And that's a nice event because it's older people but younger people also, the next day, we had a country band FM Rodeo, and they're a Washington County surrounding area regular now, then they do a very nice job. That event is more looking at the beer than it is even the music or the food. Sure. And we do have Lakefront Brewery as a major sponsor, and they every year they show up with some extra different new beers that they have and and they're they're great. So they're great to work with they're they're a partner of ours and so that's a very very nice event and it just keeps getting bigger every year. I'm glad

Fuzz Martin 5:55

to get success with that and whether it was good and all that

Lori Yahr 5:58

whether it was I look at the way I don't look at the weather too much because it doesn't really matter you know, we have to run no matter what. It does make a difference somebody brats we cook Oh, yeah. So make sense. Yep. So but other than that, it's you know, we don't cancel the day, generally, unless it's a huge storm where people are at risk, but we run anyway. And you know, it is what it is. We're waiting for the Mud Run date of heavy rain and then that'll be really muddy. But kids are like that.

Fuzz Martin 6:26

And we're going to talk about that. Coming up next week. Friends of Parks is going to be putting on a couple of events in the same week, which sounds pretty daunting German Night and Regner Fest so let's first talk about German Nights since that comes first. What night is that?

Lori Yahr 6:42

First of all, German night is Wednesday, July 13. And we opened our doors at five o'clock

Fuzz Martin 6:47

Five o'clock and so that's at Regner Park obviously where in Regner Park is German Night?

Lori Yahr 6:52

That's it around the entertainment area. So the Rotary the Kiwanis building and then we use the stage of course for the that night we have River City Blaskapelle band, they start us off and then that runs into this is us band that comes in from Fond du Lac at this little later band, right. So

Fuzz Martin 7:08

Lori Yahr 7:18

Besides the band's German night is more about the food, the German food of course, I've always used Kewaskum Frozen Foods for our brats, they do a wonderful job for us. I just put my order in 700 brats come in 300 hotdogs that are great. We just I have some pretzels that we have from Milwaukee Pretzel Company, and it's all things German, and even our volunteers. They make German desserts. And then we sell those and that, you know, that's kind of getting to be the hit. It's like, what kind of desserts do we have out there that people brought so that that's a fun thing to do, too?

Fuzz Martin 7:45

Yeah. There's nothing quite like a German pastry, in my opinion. I've had plenty in my life. So I assume that German is family friendly, right? Is there any cost to entry there? Nope.

Lori Yahr 7:57

No, we don't. That's what our policy of our board and myself, we don't charge for any cover fee ever. This is a community service we do. We'd like the community to come out and we don't want to be hindered by a cover charge. Come on. If you don't, if you're not enjoying yourself, you can go home, but we're not going to charge you $10 to figure out you're not enjoying yourself.

Fuzz Martin 8:14

Sure. No, no, absolutely. That's great. And then coming up two days later, is Regner Fest at regular parchments. Friday, July 15, and Saturday, the 16th. What is Regner Fest?

Lori Yahr 8:26

Fuzz Martin 9:17

All right, very good. I get the kids stuff is all happening on Saturday. And the Dirty Ninja Mud Run is right before that.

Lori Yahr 9:25

Well it's kind of during okay, we open our doors at 10 o'clock. The concessions open at nine o'clock. And you know there's people let the beer line at 9 o'clock, we are Wisconsin, so that's fun. So that's fun, but concession doors open at nine o'clock and you can buy whatever you want at that hour. But the kids start running I believe their first run is at eight o'clock and they do them in increments of a half an hour I believe. So I think they are wrapped up by noon or one o'clock. And part of the things that our friends group does is we give a donation to the runners we get by them their lunch. Oh, so it's a little mini cousin saw but bag of chips and a chocolate milk And that is the gift from us to the city for that run.

Oh, that's great. That's awesome. Sounds like a great time and every kid that I know that is ever running that is ahead have a fantastic time and again, the run itself apart from the city, but you guys team up with them to help put that all together. So again germinate is that Regner Park and Wednesday, July 13, Regner Fest is on Friday and Saturday, July 15, and 16th. What other things is Friends of West Bend Parks and Rec have going on?

There's this the big thing behind the scenes I do a little bit we have a bench and tree service where if you have somebody that passes away, you want to do Memorial, you can give certain amount of money to the to our organization and I float that over to the city and they buy out they'll buy a bench or a tree on the city and that person will work it out to see what they can do there.

Okay, there are a number of different parks or anything like that

It was heavily Regner, but regular is getting kind of full of benches, you know? Sure. You don't want every stadium seating? Right, exactly. They don't want that. But there are plenty of parks to put benches and trees in. So that's a great program. And then our group also does a little bit of Enchantment in the Park, we set up one area, we take down that area. Okay. And then Enchantment pays our organization for the work we've done.

Sure, like Enchantment does for a number of other organizations, exactly. softball leagues and those kinds of things. You mentioned before that you never have problem getting volunteers. But do you do you ever need volunteers,

We always take new ones. And it's actually this year, we've got a couple new ones. If somebody contacts me, and they're looking for something to do or new to the community, it's a great way to get involved and meet new people. By the end of the night. You're talking to people like they're your best friends, you know, and we do give our volunteers a t shirt and unlimited drink and food. So it's a great way to give things out but also get a lot of to you know, at the same time, perfect.

That's great. Is there someplace people can go to find out more information or to find your contact information?

You can go to the city website or call the City Hall, the parks department, they'll be able to put you in touch with me or I'm loriyahr@gmail.com. Okay, if you want to volunteer, I'll get you on the schedule.

All right, perfect. I'll drop that in the show notes for here. So if you're listening online, you can just click on that and see that and you're probably listening online because that's really the only place you can listen to a podcast already. Thanks so much for all you do for the community. Good luck with German Night and Regner Fest and thanks again for coming in. We'll see on the third time.

You're welcome you didn't rain stay away.

Stay away rain. Thanks.

Thank you again to Lori Yahr of West Bend Friends of Parks and Rec for joining us to talk about German Night and Regner Fest, German Night is Wednesday, July 13. Regner Fest Friday, July 15, and Saturday July 16. Both of them take place at West Bend's Regner Park in downtown West Bend and a big thank you to you for listening. As always, I do appreciate your support. New episodes come out every Monday you can find the show on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter @fifteenwithfuzz. You can also listen to the show on Apple podcasts, Spotify, good pods and Google podcasts or visit fifteenwithfuzz.com. You can even sign up for our emails there and we'll talk to you again next week on Monday right here on 15 minutes with Fuzz.