Watson Street smelled like exhaust and popcorn on the evening of August 1. Classic cars idled bumper to bumper past Diedrich Jewelers and the Campus Theatre, lawn chairs lined the sidewalk outside Fox and Crow Bistro, and for three hours the loudest sound in town was engines, not traffic. It was the eighth year running that Ripon has done this on purpose, and most of the people watching from the curb have never asked who actually pays for it.
The answer is not the city. It never has been.
The Loop Came Back Because Business Owners Brought It Back
For generations, scooping the loop meant loading into a car on a Friday or Saturday night, cruising Watson Street, and finding your friends somewhere along the route. The city banned it in 1992. It stayed banned for 27 years until a group of downtown business owners decided the tradition was worth more than the headache and revived it for one evening in 2019. That one evening worked well enough that it has run every summer since, this year as the eighth annual event, Saturday, August 1, from 5 to 8 p.m.
Craig Tebon, executive director of Ripon Main Street Inc., which now organizes the event, put it this way:
"Every year we hear stories from people who remember spending countless summer nights cruising downtown with family and friends. Scooping the Loop is more than just a cruise, it's an opportunity to preserve a piece of Ripon's history, create new memories and introduce younger generations to a tradition that meant so much to our community."
That distinction matters more than it sounds. A city department reviving a banned activity is a policy decision. A downtown business district reviving it is a bet that nostalgia sells enough coffee and boutique jewelry to justify the traffic control. Ripon Main Street made that bet in 2019 and it has paid off eight summers running.
The Green Everyone Assumes Is a City Park
Here is the part most residents get wrong. The Village Green, the patch of grass at the corner of Watson and Seward Streets where the concerts happen, the farmers market sets up, and the ice rink freezes over in winter, is not a city park. It is privately owned and operated by Ripon Main Street, Inc., the same nonprofit that runs Scooping the Loop.
That ownership structure is why the Green just got a facelift funded by donations and a state grant instead of a line item in a municipal budget. Ripon Main Street expanded the park by acquiring its west side in 2022, and the centerpiece of that expansion, a 20-foot by 80-foot pergola sponsored by Pericles Financial Services, now sits inside a new ADA-accessible concrete gathering area built for exactly this kind of summer.
| Village Green fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Ownership | Privately owned and operated by Ripon Main Street, Inc. |
| West side expansion | Acquired 2022 |
| Pergola | 20' x 80', sponsored by Pericles Financial Services |
| Recognition | 2024 Mid-America EDC Placemaking Award, Small Community Division |
| Earlier recognition | 2020 Wisconsin Main Street Award, Best Public Improvement |
City Administrator Adam Sonntag has described the pattern of private money carrying public-feeling projects as consistent across downtown, pointing to the Boys and Girls Club and the library renovation as examples where private donations did the heavy lifting rather than tax dollars. The Green fits that same mold. It just happens to be the one most residents walk past every Friday night without realizing they are standing on privately held ground.
Free Concerts Come With Real Risk, and It Is Not the City's
This summer marks the 32nd season of the Horicon Bank Ripon Summer Concert Series, which Ripon Main Street has organized since 1993, building on informal gatherings at the Green that trace back to 1919. The format has not changed much. Bands play the Green on summer evenings, admission is free, and refreshment sales help cover the entertainment budget.
What has not changed either is who absorbs the loss when the weather does not cooperate. Ripon Main Street's own materials are blunt about this: bands are paid rain or shine, so a bad-weather stretch can put a real dent in the following year's budget. The organization carries that risk every single season, not the city, not the county, and not a state fund.
The upside of carrying that risk is scale that a town this size should not, on paper, be able to support. On a strong night, the Green pulls 2,500 or more visitors. Across a full season, more than 10,000 people pass through for the concert series alone, in a city the City of Ripon's own site puts at 7,721 residents. That means the free concert series draws cumulative attendance greater than the entire population of the city it serves, more than once, every single summer, funded by sponsorships and beer sales rather than tax revenue.
The 2026 season closes with its biggest swing yet: a bonus show from national touring act Red Jumpsuit Apparatus on Saturday, August 15, sponsored again by Pericles Financial Services. It is free, it is at the Green, and it is the kind of booking a town of Ripon's size usually cannot afford without a nonprofit willing to underwrite the gamble.
Who Is Actually Writing the Checks
The 2026 sponsor list for the concert series reads like a cross-section of downtown itself: Alliance Laundry Systems, American Family Insurance, Atomic Plumbing, COUNTRY Financial, Condon Companies, Homan Automotive, Hy-Vee, Pericles Financial Services, Ray's Sanitation, Silver Creek Dentistry, Walsworth, and individual donors Emily and Peter Sensenbrenner. These are not civic obligations. Every name on that list chose to fund a free public event because the foot traffic it generates downtown is worth more to them than the sponsorship check.
That same logic is playing out at street level. Knuth Brewing Company recently expanded its footprint at 230 Watson Street to add a larger brewing area, event space, and an outdoor beer garden, a bet that concert nights and Loop nights bring enough people downtown to fill it. Diedrich Jewelers, a shop that has operated for a century, expanded into an adjacent storefront rather than relocate. Pastimes Pub & Grille reopened under new ownership. None of these decisions happen in a downtown that is not already drawing a crowd for free, four months a year, thanks to one nonprofit's willingness to eat the cost of a rained-out Friday.
If you want a stake in that instead of just watching from the sidewalk, Ripon Main Street's Village Green beautification program is still taking orders for commemorative bricks along the new pergola entrance, but only through August 15. After that, the next round of installations waits until fall.
What This Actually Looks Like on a Friday
The practical version of all this: park anywhere near Watson Street after 5 p.m. and the district still runs the way it has for decades, just with fewer surprises than it used to have. Grab dinner at Kristina's Family Cafe or J's BBQ before a show, walk it off browsing American Alchemy or Farrell's Fine Furnishings, and end up on a lawn chair at the Green by 7 for whatever the week's act is. On August 15, that lawn chair gets you a national touring band for the price of showing up.
None of this requires knowing who owns the park or who covers the bill when it rains. But knowing it changes how you see the pergola, the sponsor banners at the concert, and the fact that a town of under 8,000 people somehow keeps a summer concert series alive into its 32nd year. Downtown Ripon runs on a nonprofit's appetite for risk and a rotating cast of local businesses willing to underwrite it. That is a more interesting fact than "there's a concert Friday," and it is the reason there still is one.
If you already call Ripon home and want to know what else is shifting downtown before it shows up on a for-sale sign, Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate Special Properties keeps closer tabs on this stretch of Watson Street than most. Get the Special Advantage. Talk with our team today.
