Toby’s Feed Barn will not be the site for homemade pozole fundraising dinner and a visit from Santa Claus, for this year’s Path of Lights celebration. Instead, pozole will be dished out in the Dance Palace’s atrium, alongside the crafts fair, and the adjacent Papermill Creek Children’s Corner will host Santa. Toby’s owner, Chris Giacomini, said he has been scaling back activities at the barn in general since breaking his wrist and ankle in March. “It was getting pretty big,” he said. “It was time for a change.” The barn will, however, host an art exhibition by Amanda Giacomini that night. Despite no longer having pozole and Santa during the Path of Lights, Mr. Giacomini and Toby’s will still be the pozole dinner’s primary sponsor and will provide all the produce for free to make the soup, according to one of the event’s organizers, Rhonda Kutter. While many feel sad to lose the barn’s holiday contribution, others are eager to see the Dance Palace assume an even larger role as a community hub. “I’m glad to see the Dance Palace and Papermill and other groups take on the tradition,” said Melanie Stone, of Inverness, one of the original organizers of the Path of Lights. “It connects the Dance Palace, our community center, even more strongly with downtown.” The Path of Lights began seventeen years ago when many of the town’s merchants, eager to capitalize on the prime holiday shopping season, decided to keep their shops open later on the same night as the crafts fair. Over time, the event grew to encompass the festivities at Toby’s, a barbecue at Building Supply hardware store, a ceremonial tree lighting sponsored by West Marin Senior Services at the Wells Fargo branch and lines of candle-lit, paper-bag luminaries set through downtown. Volunteers with West Marin School’s Parent Teacher Student Association and the English Language Advisory Council serve the pozole and generally raise around $1,000 in donations.
Path of Lights will be held on Friday, Dec. 4, beginning at 4 p.m. at the Dance Palace. Santa Claus will arrive at Papermill Creek Children’s Corner at 5 p.m., and the tree-lighting ceremony in front of Wells Fargo will begin at 6:30 p.m.