The initiative of the historic center Consortium is skipped, but the activities are organized to welcome customers in the evening
BELLUNO. Evenings dedicated to shopping in the center of Belluno are skipped, but word of mouth invites merchants to keep their shops open on Thursdays in the summer from 9 pm to 11 pm. Starting tomorrow, for the traditional Saturday dedicated to the beginning of the sales.
For many years now, the Belluno Centro storico Consortium has been organizing the “Evening Sale” event, a prologue to the “Thursdays in the evening” which started the following week and ends after August 15th. Covid has changed many things. This year Thursday evenings, as we have known them, with music, entertainment, sports and concerts, will not be there. And also tomorrow evening there will be no music and entertainment in the city center, but the shops will be open from 9 pm to 11 pm (those who want to participate, of course), which will be repeated again next Thursday.
“There’s a kind of word of mouth going on,” he explains Max Capraro that in the center of Belluno has two shops, “we are preparing to keep open in the evening, both tomorrow and next Thursdays, following the tradition of Thursday evenings”.
Last year a program of events for the summer was set up by the Belluno Centro Consortium, even if lighter than in the past to avoid crowds. Belluno and its province had come out of months of lockdown and the desire to return to normal had overcome the fear of contagion. Capraro recalls: «As a Consortium we have organized, together with the bars, a series of micro musical events and cultural initiatives managed by the bars themselves with an administration activity in Porta Dante. It was the first mass event after the spring lockdown and there was a great participation, also because in the meantime all the local festivals were canceled. This year the situation is very similar, there will be few festivals that will be held and many of these are limited to catering. Evaluating what had happened last year and then the trend of Covid during the winter, as a Consortium we decided not to do Thursday evenings, because the world would arrive here in the center ».
A world, especially the youth one, which has all the rights, adds Capraro, to have fun, to go out and to be together. “Unfortunately, a series of alarms is generated in this way: we do not want at the end of the summer, as traders, to find ourselves being pointed out as smearers. Not to mention the tension that has risen, even in the heart of Belluno, in recent weeks. In the face of similar episodes, we have said to ourselves in recent days that we have made the right choice ».
But in recent years a tradition has been created, in the Belluno area but not only, that is to go out on Thursday evenings to browse the shops open from 21 to 23. Thus, thanks to the liberalization of opening hours since we are in the white zone, some shopkeepers of the center of Belluno have decided to open their activities both tomorrow evening, from 21 to 23, and next Thursday, always from 21 to 23. The national rules on trade (from the Bersani decree in then) they allow it so why not take advantage of it? Of course there will be no musical shows or animations, or even less the dance. Nor the concerts or sporting events to which Thursday evenings had accustomed us in the past. In fact, this is not an initiative organized by the Consortium but depends on the will of the individual operators. No overall advertising, but only the very social one of those who decide to keep open and obviously want to make it known.