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Emily Knapton

Greg7aml627_2025-06-27-07-20-01

Well, we all made it to Friday. It's time for Main Street, Connecticut, a chance to showcase our local towns and cities and the things they have to offer. So today we're in Westport and News 12 Connecticut's Greg Thompson is down by the Saugatuck River. Greg, a lot going on this weekend. A ton going on. Don't let a little bit of a rainy start to things fool you. Westport is definitely the place to be this weekend. It's stuff going on throughout Sunday, but the fun starts today with the annual sidewalk sale. Stores lined up down posts Road east and over onto Main Street. They're going to be wheeling out different tables. They have all different sorts of deals and promotions and sales going on both on those tables and also inside the stores. We have a full list of those inside or those are online, including a map of where to find all of them. Like we said, that goes. Through Sunday. Now we mentioned that tomorrow is the big day. That includes celebrating one of the five Ds of dodgeball. Of course we're talking about duck. It is the 16th annual Great Duck Race. If you're looking for fun, this definitely fits the bill. You get it because it's a duck, a bill, and there's going to be a ton of little rubber ducks dumped into the river this year. They're hoping to raise $90,000 for charity. Now we also have a family fun fair happening right before that on Jessup Green right here in front of the library. There's also the annual June Day emphasis on the UN part of June. The United Nations Association of Southwestern Connecticut hosting 300 guests from the UN, and they're going to be putting a bunch of their flags over on the bridge that goes over the river here. If you can see behind me, they're actually setting up for some of those flags right now to put up here, so. Ton of colors really going to be cool to see coming up at 8, we have an absolute fire quacker of an interview for you. We're taking a deeper dive in a preview into that great duck race for now in Westport. Greg Thompson, News 12, Connecticut. All right, lots of preparation going on there, Greg. Thank you.

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Greg8aml627_2025-06-27-08-23-48

Well, we made to Friday, it's time for Main Street, Connecticut, a chance to showcase all our local towns and cities have to offer today we're in Westport and if you're looking for some fun this weekend, News 12 Connecticut's Greg Thompson has something that definitely fits the bill. OK, go ahead, Greg. Yeah, yeah, we won't give it away. Look, uh, we got to be honest, there's a lot of foul options out there, but this is a very good one, and it also happens to be a foul option. It's the 16th annual Westport Great Duck Race, but hey, don't take the word of a quack like me. We, we have an expert here. We're joined by Katie Augustin. You're the president of the Westport Sunrise Rotary Club. I, I gotta be honest, this kind of sounds like something fake that you would hear about in a movie or like a Roald Dahl book or something. What exactly are we going to see on this hill? Behind us here tomorrow, OK, yeah, thanks Greg. Well, the whole place is transformed. We have thousands of families here tomorrow for the great duck race, and our engineers built a fake river right here on Jessup Green in front of the Westport library where we pour in like thousands, over 3000 of the little yellow rubber duckies like yours and they race down the sluice and then they win a big prize at the end. Yeah, I know you. To be in the actual river, but, but you moved it, you made it, you went to the uh the human made one over there. Yes, we did. We did it in the actual Saugatuck River for over 12 years and then 4 years ago after COVID, our engineers came up with this idea because the tides weren't cooperating in the big river. Well, you know what they say, if it walks like a duck and it talks like a duck, it's probably for charity, and there is a charity component of this. Absolutely, because the Westport Sunrise Rotary Club, we are a service organization. So we raise all the money so then we can give it away to charities. After the $10,000 prizes that people get, all the proceeds go to charities. That's awesome. So if I want to get involved with this because right now I don't have a dog in the fight, but I can still get a duck in the race. Oh, absolutely. So for $20 you can get a raffle ticket and that will get you a duck in the race. So then if your duck crosses first, you win $5000 and then other prizes as well. You can go online to our website which is Westport Sunrise rotary.org and just buy a ticket right there. Beautiful, easy as that. We'll also get that on Newst2.com. Now aside from that going on, if we want to waddle over to the parking lot, also, I know there's going to be a lot of fun going over in this, you know, not just during the race part of the day, right? So from 10 to 2 tomorrow, the parking lot is transformed into the family fun fair. So all of our sponsors are here. We have great sponsors and we partner with all of the community organizations. The Westport police will be here with a tent. The fire department dumps in the water. The library right here. So there's games, there's activities, there's food trucks. There's so much to do tomorrow. So come on down. And there's so much things. I feel like all these activities coming at me. I'm going to have to duck, but until then I'm just going to, you know, I'm going to stick my beak out. I'm going to get over here and check out all this fun going on tomorrow. For now we are in Westport. Greg Thompson, News 12, Connecticut, and they keep coming. OK, Greg, thank you.

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News 12 is checking out all of the best spots in Westport.

Main Street Connecticut: Showcasing the best Westport has to offer this weekend

News 12 is checking out all of the best spots in Westport.

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