The city of Goodyear wants to see you move to the groove this 4th of July.

During its 9th annual Star Spangled 4th celebration, Goodyear is inviting the public to get on board and be part of The Largest Soul Train Dance.*

This will be Goodyear’s second attempt at a Guinness World Record. Last 4th of July, Goodyear was successful in their attempt to hold the Guinness World Record for the largest gathering of people wearing false mustaches. 

There were 1,957 people who wore a false mustache to set a record for the largest group wearing them, surpassing the previous record of 1,532 fake mustaches worn at the Gilda’s LaughFest held in Grand Rapids, Michigan on March 7, 2013, according to Guinness World Records.

“We set an expectation by breaking a world record last year – we just had to attempt another one,” Debbie Diveney, business-operations supervisor of Goodyear Ballpark.

Image courtesy of The Huffington Post: http://huff.to/VnOyRg
This photo was taken at the Philadelphia World Record attempt.

Beginning at 7 p.m. on Friday, July 4, event organizers at the ballpark will start calling down people to begin lining up for the Soul Train. The Party Crashers will get the attempt underway with live music beginning at 7:30 p.m. Although there are expected to be several hundred people in the Soul Train dance, no more than two people can dance together along the Soul Train line.

The current record for the largest Soul Train dance is 291 people set by the Philadelphia Soul Train Line Dancers in Feb. 13, 2012 at the Art Museum in Philadelphia. The record took three and a half hours to complete.

“We believe we can smoke that record,” said Debbie Diveney, “Like last year’s Guinness World Record we set, this is one that involves group participation, which will be a lot of fun. We want everyone to be a part of the movement.”

Goodyear’s Star Spangled 4^th event, which averages about 15,000 attendees every year, is presented by Fry’s Food Stores and sponsored by Palm Valley Pediatric Dentistry, Dunn Orthodontics, West Valley Pediatric Dentistry, Snyder’s of Hanover Pretzels, the Cleveland Indians and Cincinnati Reds. Other activities include the Wet Zone and Fun Zone with inflatable slides and bouncers, corn hole and a free photo booth. Food vendors will also be present in various locations throughout the event. Fireworks will start after dark.

Gates for the event open at 6 p.m. and Goodyear Mayor Georgia Lord, who will be accompanied by City Council members, will kick off the countdown to fireworks.

Admission and parking are free. Additional parking is available at Desert Edge High School, on Yuma Road, west of Estrella Parkway. Shuttle service to and from Desert Edge High School will run from 6 p.m. to 11 p.m.

For more information, call (623) 882-3120 or visit www.goodyearbp.com

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*In case you forgot what a Soul Train Dance entails, this is the funky dance that requires those involved to form two lines with a space in the middle for dancers to strut their stuff and dance down the line in consecutive order.

It’s National Safety Month. To help kick off this month, Glendale is launching a campaign designed to reinforce safety messages during the summer. The campaign is called Operation: Safe Summer and it culminates with a public event at Westgate on June 20.

There are several departments that will offer programs and events to remind residents of their mission: to keep the city’s residents safe with an outstanding quality of life. These departments include the Police and Fire Departments, the Transportation Services Department and Parks, Recreation and Library Services.

With a dedicated website and logo, the campaign features a different safety message each week, covering timely summer topics such as kids out of school for the summer, children being home alone and out riding bicycles more often, heat-related issues, vacation and travel safety, BBQ and fireworks precautions, and of course, water and pool safety. Information will be distributed through public facilities in Glendale and at certain events, as well.

The public event will be held on June 20,  6:30-8:30 p.m., called “Surviving the Summer,” at Westgate Entertainment District, 6770 N. Sunrise Blvd. Held in the shopping center’s Fountain Park, this free event will feature a variety of agencies and vendors to educate residents on water and sun safety and much more.

For more information on the event and the Operation: Safe Summer campaign, including great tips and resources you can take advantage of, visit www.glendaleaz.com/safesummer.

The town of Prescott Valley Police Department is back on bikes.

At least some officers are. As part of the PVPD bike patrol, officers trade in their typical cruisers for bikes, part of the time.

The Prescott Valley program was originally started in 1997 by current Sergeants Scott Stebbins and Brandon Bonney. Stebbins started his stint as a bike patrol officer soon after he graduated from the Northern Arizona Regional Training Academy in Prescott Valley. He patrolled in a vehicle for eight months and then joined the bike patrol.Stebbins said that while on a bike, officers are able to observe and react to things they may not see from their patrol cars.

It’s also easier to connect to the public, he said.

“The bikes are a great community policing tool to meet citizens,” Stebbins said. “When you’re on a bike, people come up and talk.”

The first PVPD bike patrol was active for almost two and half years until the economy and a growing Prescott Valley necessitated more officers on the streets in a patrol car. Those needs coupled with the recession kept the bikes garaged.

Officer Stebbins with his bike

Stebbins never lost his passion for the program. Eager to see the bike patrol continue, Stebbins recently obtained authorization for certified officers to carry their bikes on their patrol cars.  The department has certified 11 officers in bike patrol. Two of the officers, Stebbins and Officer Jason Lohman, have logged another 40 hours of advanced training.

These officers can park their car and ride in a patrol area. To maintain the ability to quickly respond to another incident if needed, they stay within a five minute ride back to their vehicle.

Police Chief Bryan Jarrell, who also is a trained police cyclist, voiced the value of the program.

“I have experienced the tremendous benefit to having police officers on bikes,” Jarrell said. “We saw police officers ride right up to people who were doing drug transactions and didn’t realize it was the police.”

Training for the bike patrol is grueling. Officers complete 40 hours of instruction on a broad range of skills and topics, including long ride physical endurance, obstacle courses with steps, curbs and seesaws, timed cone drills, shooting after a hard ride, using a bike to control suspects, and even traffic stops. Stebbins once made a DUI arrest after chasing down an admittedly slow moving impaired driver on his bike.

“It’s an effective tool and just one more approach we can rely on to serve this community the most efficient way possible,” Jarrell said.