Which would you attend???

Where: Downtown Middletown

Cost: $25 per person

What people get: They get access to pulled pork barbecue, drinks and bluegrass music

This summer people can celebrate the ensuing Independence Day downtown with some barbecue and bluegrass music.

Downtown Middletown Inc. will be presenting the inaugural Red, White and Bluegrass event that will feature food and music downtown.

The event, while it is a fundraiser for Downtown Middletown Inc., really “supports the efforts of what’s happening downtown,” said Patrick Kay, executive director of DMI. “It’s also getting people to understand that Middletown’s a happening place to be. Stuff’s going on here. What these events do is it gets people to see there are businesses, there are restaurants, there are shops”

This will be the second event DMI has presented in as many months. The Saturday before Mother’s Day, the downtown champion hosted the Women’s Wine and Chocolate Walk that brought in more than 170 women to downtown. Kay said at least 70 percent of those women had never been to Middletown before.

“(It) will have a residual effect on this downtown that will far outlast the event,” he said. “It brings in people that normally wouldn’t come here.”

The event will feature hearty portions of pulled pork barbecue from local restaurant Stained 1054 Bistro and bluegrass music from the Comet Bluegrass All-Stars at Governor’s Square. Cost is $25 per person.

Scott Martin, general manager of downtown restaurant @ The Square, sees this new event as a continuation of downtown’s resurgence.

“If people can get the idea to come to downtown for good food and live music, they’ll come back,” he said.

The Broad Street Bash, the summer concert series that kicked off its seventh season earlier this month, has helped draw thousands to downtown. While the bluegrass event isn’t expected to draw that many, a few hundred people can make a difference.

“Those kinds of things are what’s bringing people downtown,” said Martin.

Kay said events like the Red, White and Bluegrass and Women’s Wine and Chocolate “puts downtown on an even playing field” with other parts of the city that get a natural flow of traffic.

“The East End’s got traffic and plenty of party, plenty of the highways, plenty of people coming through,” he said.

How to go

When: 4:30 to 9 p.m. on June 29

Where: Downtown Middletown

Cost: $25 per person

What people get: They get access to pulled pork barbecue, drinks and bluegrass music