It’s a party at the Clatsop County Fair & Expo Center at the April festival, where attendees sample ocean fare alongside traditional fair food.

Where else can you pose for a photo with a larger-than-life inflatable crab, sample Oregon wines fairground-style backed by local bands and pick out the right shuttle back to downtown Astoria from names like “sturgeon bus” and “tuna bus”?

The Crab, Seafood & Wine Festival will return Friday, Saturday and Sunday, turning the quiet Clatsop County Fair & Expo Center into a sprawling scene of a bustling celebration with freshly-caught seafood, art vendors and a lineup of live music.

“It’s a double win for us when we can bring folks in from out of town and expose them to local artists, local producers, local distillers,” David Reid, executive director of the Astoria-Warrenton Area Chamber of Commerce, said.

Nearly 150 local vendors will take part in the annual festival, on track to again attract thousands of visitors to Astoria.

Moving through exhibit halls, outdoor spaces and performance areas, revelers will have the opportunity to enjoy a taste of more than 40 Oregon wineries, as well as breweries, distilleries, ocean-sourced bites, arts and crafts tents and local nonprofit groups.

“It’s nice to see some familiar vendors, but it’s also nice to bring in some new vendors,” Kristen Klein, event coordinator at the Astoria-Warrenton Area Chamber of Commerce, said.

Festivalgoers can browse and buy local goods while also sampling products and learning about where local seafood and wine selections come from. Menus in recent years have included fried oysters, crab cakes, crab pasta, seafood ramen dishes and more.

The festival is also a hit for fans of local bands, with 16 performances scheduled for the weekend. Gabe Hess, Brue Thomas Smith, Brothers Still and the Scott Brocket Trio make up Friday’s lineup, while eight musicians are slated for Saturday, including the New Iberians, Jane Doe and several others.

Sunday’s performances include the Katie Jane Band, Misty Mamas, Brownsmead Flats and Bruce Thomas Smith — for those that didn’t catch the Friday show.

Reid and Klein said the festival is community-driven, describing it as a massive event for the Astorian and Warrenton areas. It’s also volunteer-run, and the organizers shared that the festival still needs people to help out. (Not to mention that volunteers get free admission.)

When it first started in 1982, the festival focused only on crab. Now, that includes other local seafood varieties, plus Oregon wine.

“It was strictly crab,” Reid said, “but since then, it’s evolved as the products, as the things that are available to us have evolved.”

The festival, intended to be an off-season event, has also grown substantially in its 41 years.

“I think the number they expected was 500 people, so they bought enough crab for that and almost immediately ran out,” Reid said, laughing. That year ended up attracting about 2,500 people. “It was an instant hit.”

Crab, Seafood & Wine Festival

Clatsop County Fair & Expo Center, 92937 Walluski Loop, Astoria

4 to 9 p.m. Friday, 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Saturday and 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday

Admission is $20 to $25 for Friday or Saturday and $10 to $15 for Sunday, buy tickets online or at the door

www.astoriacrabfest.com