Forth of July: Merchants, Vendors, Entertainers, a festival

[Dan Slife]

This years Parade and firework turnout was great. After walking the parade route, a couple observers and I tossed around perceptions of the crowd and the gathering(s) in general.

While passing out papers in the parade, I got the sense that many people come from other cities to watch our parade. In fact, at least 10 indidivuals refused to accept the Observer, saying they don't live here with a confused, uninterested look on thier faces. Because I witnessed a similar look on nearly half the faces I engaged, I would unscientifically extrapolate this out to indicate that ALOT of people are not natives.

More telling evidence of this phenomenon is found in the organization and execution of our fireworks show. In the walking city, we block off nearly a quarter of the accessable green space at Lakewood Park for.......... parking!!!!! Then, after the show, police channel the traffic jam of fleeing outsiders(and lazy insiders ) as efficiently to city boundaries as possible.

In terms of public goods expenditures, the return to the community for these subsidized visitors is zero. I don't necessarily have a problem with this......

However, if we were to open up Lakewood Park to merchants,vendors, entertainers and all other elements of festival (perhaps Carnival..pegan style ) we might be able to capitalize on this massive import of spectators.

The point being, we as citizens of Lakewood are subsidizing this show. It's not cheap to employ somany officers and park employees on overtime pay. The cleanup is costly, I scoped the place out this morning. It was a mess. Think of all the cigarette butts, wrappers, and particular junk in general that is difficult to clean.

We are already, as taxpayers, subsidizing the fireworks show. The least the city can do is open up the festival to NATIVE MERCHANTS, so that capital may recirculate within the community affecting positive economic ripples rather than an uneven drag on public goods.

Limit it to Lakewood Merchants only. Those who pay our taxes.

Start the Festival immediately after the Parade. Keep the thing going all day. Let the stage host a cycling of various acts, hitting relavent music niches. Over-represent the young, and families as a target audiance. Make it hip and family friendly at the same time (achieved by rotating acts). Or, perhaps you set up another small stage in the skate park...what ever it takes to mix it up and get a real rip-roaring festival going.

Why not have a group of skilled Fire-Spinners do a pre-show on the Northermost baseball diamond?

The artistic piece could be very inexpensive. I know the fire-spinners will do it for free.

Why not make our 4th of July, the best in the region?

[Kenneth Warren]

Dan:

You make some very good points.

I concur with your reading on the visitor mix in the crowd.

What we are finding with so many LO inquiries is that Lakewood is a destination.

That human flow, the urban pulse is a magnet. That's life in the city, baby.

That said, your post raises good points about how respect may be earned and paid.

The key is respect.

Are these visitors respecting the city and residents?

What does a Fireworks display really earn for Lakewood - in both tangible and intangible senses, among homies and day-trippers?

Is there a better mix of 21 century activities that will leverage the assets wagered to the benefit of residents and local merchants?

Again you raise some good possibilities.

I spoke with a resident policeman today about the large number of visitors coming to Lakewood for the Fireworks display and whether he felt as a resident that the cost produced benefit - tangible or intangible - for the city.

He felt that the event does earn Lakewood some measure of respect among people in surrounding neighborhoods and burgs. It's a point of community pride.

Like the Cushman and backyard pick-up, the Fireworks display may resonate with intangible and traditional values in the Lakewood psyche.

Quite simply, this is the way Lakewood does the Fourth. These are the signs that Lakewood produces to signify that our city is distinctive, committed to values and events that are a cut above the other burgs.

If we are putting such 'loss leader' values out to the world, inviting people to enjoy the park and show on our dime, then we need to figure out how to satisfy ourselves with an exchange that may not reach the tangible levels your are suggesting through the merchant class.

Do local Indie merchants even want to hustle the crowd on a long, hot summer day?

So there are more questions raised by your post in conjunction with our recent anthropological inquiries at street level.

What is Lakewood for these visitors?

Does Lakewood serve up an old home town nostalgia time tunnel to the visitor, a kind of liminal fantasy land for the way we were and the way you are not anymore?

How does a class lens filter the view?

Is a big, huge crowd from all corners enough to satisfy the city that we know how to throw a Fourth?

The Lakewood Project has clearly raised the bar. The residents know the quality of the performance and enjoy the scene.

If little dudes in hot sword fights with sparklers are not enough to quell your thirst for revolution, Lakewood's acclaimed fire spinning pagans will certainly raise the bar for an Independence Day celebration.

Again we come back to the norms and values issue - how we advance respect, trust, prosperity and sustainability in the Lakewood environment.

To see the jewel of Lakewood staggering under heaps of refuse the morning after always give pause.

Mike made a point in another post about a skate board event.

Another good possibility that accentuates an emergent asset with traction connecting the new generation of Lakewood homies.

We need to advance the inquiry further toward the business and cultural OPs that might benefit from such an amplification of assets on Independence Day.

Kenneth Warren

[Stephen Calhoun]

It does seem that the influx might be better exploited. BUT, it would be quite possible to amplify the incentive to visit and hang out on indie day to the extent that you have 100,000 people show up at 10am and half stay right to the spectacular grand finale at 11pm, joining the other 50,000 (more?) who come for the fireworks.

This is a long hang that comes with its own challenges.

When I lived near Burlington Vermont, they had to cancel the Reggae Festival at North Beach when it became too large. This might be said to result from a natural evolution, yet the homies only remembered fondly the first few 'modest' years before the big success.

And, as any producer of citified music festivals knows well, the load placed on local services and infrastructure becomes a huge issue once the stress factors elevate to the margins: parking, bathrooms, refuse, food, alcohol, injuries, petty crime. These are issues from the git-go too, just not huge ones.

Little Italy's Festival is a good example of a local event close to the margin.

[Jeff Endress]

I have to agree with Dan that we have a great event which we can use to capitalize (exploit) for our own purposes. Having said that, there remain a good number of concerns as to how you generate an offset to the current (and additional expansion) costs. If it could be done properly, it could provide a money making opportunity for area business, as well as a (partial) offset to the city costs otherwise involved. However, because entrance into the park is free, (and trying to set up a Cedar Point entrance fee would be virtually impossible), most probably, we would be exploring the rental of stall space, some type of revenue split from vendors, or a form of licensing, non-resident parking fees, etc. This, in turn, causes its own additional problems for enforcement, collection and so forth. And of course, there remains the issue of "donating" our public space over a long weekend to "visitors" who may, or may not, actually contribute beyond their presence, to the potential exclusion of our residents. I think it could be done, but, given that creating a larger "draw" holds with it a certainty of greater city expenditures and more crowding/parking/access problems for residents, I think you would have to undertake a very careful examination of whether there is societal and economic justification to making Lakewood Park the Fourth of July place to be. I would hate to see Lakewood ending up as "hosts" to hordes of non-resident party-goers, while our citizens are forced to pack up their picnic hampers and head down to Wooster where they know they can find a peacful patch of grass.