2013 Cruise In LogoThe annual West Side Nut Club Cruise-In takes place in June.  This years event takes place on West Franklin Street from 3PM to 9PM on Saturday June 8th, 2013.  St Joe Ave. to Wabash Ave. will be closed off for cruise-in participants.  All makes and models are welcome (cars, trucks, & bikes). There will also be door prizes and a half pot drawing (8:00PM). Registration is from 3PM to 6PM.  The first 200 registrants will receive dash plaques.  Trophies will be presented for people's choice for best Ford, best GM, best Chrysler, best special interest, best truck, best bike and the chairman will present a trophy for his favorite.  Registration is free.  However, donations to the West Side Nut Club Scholarship Fund are welcome.

Please patronize the Franklin Street businesses for your food and drinks for the evening!  Rain date is Sunday June 8, from 2-6pm.  Not responsible for accidents, damges or loss of property.  No burn outs.

Age groups include: pre-school, kindergarten, special education, and 1st-3rd grades.

The ropes drops at 1pm, so get there early! The event will be held rain or shine.

Nut Club member Jim Griese and family pose for a picture with Santa during the 2012 Santa LandImproving and streamlining is what the West Side Nut Club is all about, it's been going on for 91 years with the annual Fall Festival and the webpage is no different.  Stepping up from the old gallery software, the West Side Nut Club is now featuring pictures from the Fall Festival, the Cruise-In, Easter Egg Hunt, and even Santa Land on Smug Mug.  The idea was first brought up by member Mark DeCamps and Decamps has been integral in getting every up and running smooth.

Having an account with a renowned service like Smug Mug offers great flexibility in getting pictures up on the web with a lot more ease since many times we are uploading hundreds if not thousands of pictures at a time, it also gives Nut Club patrons a place to view, share,  and even purchase pictures for their own keepsakes.  Purchased pictures can even be made into t-shirts, postcards, refrigerator magnets, and even coffee mugs. 

For the West Side Nut Club's Santa Land you can find the pictures taken with Santa online.  Once you have your picture taken with Santa you are given that picture in an envelope.  On the back of that envelope is the West Side Nut Club's Smug Mug website along with the password to get you into the album so you can see the picture with Santa and then decide if you want to purchase more copies or have them made into the special merchandise.

You can either use the photos link at the top to get to the West Side Nut Club Smug Mug Gallery or click on this link here.

Reitz Marching Band makes its way down Franklin Street during the Main Parade.See the Main Parade capping off the 91st Annual West Side Nut Club Fall Festival. See veterans, floats, bands, and everything you expect from a parade as it makes it's way down West Franklin Street in Evansville, IN.

Click here to see the video

Courtesy of the Evansville Courier and Press.  A proud sponsor of the 91st Annual Fall Festival and the Annual Lighthouse Parade.

For many, Pet Parade is best part of West Side Nut Club's Fall Festival

• By Jared Council

No, it wasn't a case of Africa meets West Side Evansville. It was just Jamie Rexing's white horse, Tyson.

"I painted him," said the 34-year-old.
Samantha Owens

Tyson was among scores of animals that sniffed, quacked or simply relaxed as they made their way down W. Franklin Street as a part of the West Side Nut Club's 91st annual Fall Festival.

Tyson wasn't the only creature that appeared to be observing Halloween early this year. One toy dog strutted in a dinosaur costume. One brown and one two-tone boxer stood in a ring with a referee and ring girl as — well, boxers.And two German shepherds sported sheriff's deputy shirts, their little "jail birds" following close by.

Dogs and horses walked free, but cats, rabbits, ducks and chickens were mostly caged.  None of that seemed to matter to 5-year-old Jack Schulte, who quacked at the ducks, "flapped" his arms at the chicken and interacted with nearly every passing animal. "He's having a great time," said Lana Schulte, 41, about her son. This was her family's first Fall Festival since moving here from New York.

Thousands of people convened on W. Franklin Street for the parade, and some animals took advantage of the large audience to protest.  Two young girls pulled a wagon with two chickens in a cage, signs on which read: "West Side Egg Farmers," "On Strike," and "Egg-xhausted."  "That was cute," said Connie Burton of Wadesville, Ind., who watched the parade proceed down an alley through a Hardee's window.

Awards were given in several categories, including "large animal," "boy with pet," and "no pet." So some children dressed up as cowboys, superheroes and angels didn't have leashes. Kelly Bertsch, 34, said and she and her family have been participating for more than 30 years. In 1982, she and her brother sat at a mock restaurant booth with burgers, shakes and condiments on hand. They recreated that "Arnold's Drive-In" display for this year, but now her children, niece and nephew sat at the booth. "We all live somewhere else now ...," said Bertsch about her family, "but we all come back every year just to do this."