Spring arrives early on the streets of downtown Ashland this year. On Friday, March 27, from 5 to 8 PM, Ashland Fourth Fridays opens its 2025 season with a celebration that brings together Big Red’s Birthday weekend, the sweet tradition of Girl Scout cookie season, and a live sing-along performance that will lodge itself in your brain with the same stubborn persistence as a sleeve of Thin Mints.
At the center of the evening’s magic is a pop-up photo experience donated by Leigh Rooke, owner of Sign Gypsies Mechanicsville. Rooke is gifting Ashland Fourth Fridays custom yard sign displays throughout the entire season — a gesture as generous as it is colorful. For this first installment, guests will find a Secretariat-themed sign honoring the legendary thoroughbred’s birthday weekend alongside a cookie-themed display set up right beside the sales table of Ashland Girl Scout Troop 609. Grab a box of Samoas, strike a pose, and make a memory.
“Ashland is the Center of the Universe, and we feel the warmth and community bonds every time we come to help those in Ashland celebrate.”
— Leigh Rooke, Owner, Sign Gypsies Mechanicsville
Rooke’s connection to Ashland runs deep. Sign Gypsies Mechanicsville has shown up at Habitat for Humanity key ceremonies, sweet-sixteen celebrations, and the kind of milestone graduations from Patrick Henry High School and Randolph-Macon College that parents photograph obsessively and kids pretend to find embarrassing. The signs, she says, have a way of becoming heirlooms — framed on walls, tucked into scrapbooks, summoned each year with the familiar anticipation of “when is it coming, and what will it say?”
Victor Gottlieb performing Girl Scout Cookies
“When we attend the Habitat for Humanity homecomings celebrating the passing of the house keys to the family, I always beam with a big smile when the family wants to take pictures with our greetings. They become souvenirs in photo frames on the wall, or fill scrapbooks.”
— Leigh Rooke, Owner, Sign Gypsies Mechanicsville
If the photo spot plants a smile on your face, the live music will plant something even harder to shake. Ashland Song Contest winner Victor Gottlieb will take the stage and perform two original songs back to back: “Secretariat,” a tribute to the hometown hero of the horse world, and “Girl Scout Cookies,” an ode that may permanently rewrite the way you think about Tagalongs.
The chorus of “Girl Scout Cookies” is already earning its reputation as the earworm of the season:
“Girl Scout Cookies, I just can’t wait.
Girl Scout Cookies, they all taste great.
Girl Scouts are in town and cookies are around.
We’re glad to have you here in Ashland this year.”
Fair warning: you will not be able to stop singing “Girl Scout Cookies” for the same reason you cannot stop eating them.
Girl Scouts earning their Explore Ashland badges
Ashland Fourth Fridays has built a loyal following across Hanover County and beyond as one of the Richmond region’s most beloved free community events. Each fourth Friday from March through October — with a pause ahead of Ashland Train Day on Saturday, April 26 — downtown Ashland transforms into an open-air gathering place from 5 to 8 PM. Free live music fills the air, lawn games sprawl across the green, and Ashland Town Hall hums with local artisans, craft vendors, small business owners, and food purveyors who collectively make the case that downtown Ashland is not just the Center of the Universe but the center of everything worth doing in it.
On March 27, that universe expands to include youngest entrepreneurs selling cookies at their first public table, a birthday tribute to a legend born nearby, and a musician who turns community pride into something you can hum all the way home. Admission is free. Parking is easy. The cookies are limited, so arrive hungry.
WHAT: Ashland Fourth Fridays Season Opener — Secretariat & Girl Scout Cookie Celebration
WHEN: Friday, March 27, 2025, 5–8 PM
WHERE: 121 Thompson Street (Ashland Town Hall area)
ADMISSION: Free and open to the public