“Do the Poinsettia Festival first, then watch the Chargers beat the Broncos,” Peder Norby of the Downtown Encinitas MainStreet Association said Friday.

Earlier this week, organizers of Poway’s annual street fair blamed the 10 a.m. start time of last Sunday’s Chargers-Cincinnati Bengals game for a decline in their event’s attendance numbers.

“As a Charger fan, when the Chargers are playing, you’re not going to get me to a street fair,” Norby said.

The free Encinitas festival runs from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. and fills seven blocks of South Coast Highway 101 — from D to J streets — with 450 vendor booths.

Entertainment is scheduled at three stages.

For a sit-down meal, visitors can choose from 40 restaurants in Encinitas’ historical downtown strip.

Between the stores and the vendor booths, visitors can get a jump on their holiday shopping.

At least one of Encinitas’ many artists, Ronald Wickersham, will open his studio at 818 S. Coast Highway 101 to shoppers. The painter’s elongated human figures and puffball-topped trees seem to rise from the canvas.

Also abundant are artisans.

Porcelain figurines, macrame necklaces and Celtic jewelry are among the treasures that Councilwoman Maggie Houlihan said she has bought at previous Poinsettia Festivals.

“The price was so good and the quality was so high,” she said Friday.

It’s a “social shopping” experience, Houlihan said, and she chats and hugs her way from one end of the festival to the other, stopping to enjoy entertainers along the way.

Visitors also can stop for a neck massage or a spiritual reading.

A new feature of this year’s event, at the parking lot near Pino’s Cucina Italia at I Street, is virtual surfing, where visitors can plant their feet on a surfboard pretend to ride a wave.

For the free price of admission, visitors also can watch people. Organizers say they hope thousands will attend.

South Coast Highway 101 will be closed to traffic from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Sunday. Free parking will be available at the Encinitas Commuter Station on Vulcan Avenue, between D and E streets; at City Hall, on Vulcan Avenue at D Street, and at the Moonlight Beach parking lot, at Third and C streets.

The telephone number for the Downtown Encinitas MainStreet Association is (760) 943-1950.