Speightstown quiet again after We Gatherin’ buzz fades

Despite an impressive line-up of We Gatherin’ activities in February — including a Sunset Concert, Standpipe Stories, a heritage walk, and even a draughts tournament — Speightstown has once again slipped back into its familiar quiet, with residents and vendors calling for more consistent activity in the northern town.

When Barbados TODAY visited on Friday, the streets were mostly empty, with only a handful of passersby stopping at shops before moving on to other destinations.

The contrast was stark compared to February, when the town and the wider parish came alive with community-focused events spread across the month.

For Alison, a vendor in the area, the excitement never fully reached all of Speightstown itself. She argued that more could have been done to draw people into the town centre throughout the month.

“I thought it’d be like more tents and stuff like that…. It wasn’t. [It] was just a small [event], just here you see, just here,” she said, gesturing to the stretch between Fisherman’s Pub and Alexandra School. “The most people were down by the esplanade. It wasn’t really a big thing.”

She added that traffic changes have also made it harder for businesses to truly grow.

“Since they put it as a one-way, the traffic [is not there]. People are not going to go up to come back down to Speightstown. They will just keep straight to town and do whatever they have to do. So traffic-wise, customer-wise, everything had just gone down,” she said.

At Fisherman’s Pub, however, the outlook was a little brighter. A staff member, who declined to give her name, said the restaurant and bar did see a noticeable boost following February’s activities.

“They come for the food and the atmosphere, and then we usually have on Tuesday nights, a live band. They come and join the competition — the dancing competition — and we have great results on the floor. It was a positive [change]. Even though the season was kind of dying down, we thought that it would have been slow for us, but everything was up.”

One resident conducting business in Speightstown, who gave her name only as Cynthia, was busy trying to hustle back home, but said she had mixed feelings about We Gatherin’.
“February definitely had a lot of events, but honestly… after the month was over, down here was dead again. We need more activities down here pun a regular,” she said.

(SB)