Some of the best news to come out of Oakland lately has been
the city's emergence – especially in the Uptown and Koreatown/Northgate (KONO)
districts - as the hub of the East Bay art scene. And the hallmark of that
emergence has been the monthly Oakland First Fridays street festival that drew
over 150,000 people last year.
But First
Fridays has hit hard times after recent rainouts. So to save money, KONO
Community Benefit District, which owns the festival, told the Oakland Tribune
that it has ended its contract with the woman who ran the show for the past
year, professional event producer Sarah Kidder, and will go back to using
volunteers.
This is
causing consternation among First Fridays' participants, who say Kidder was the
key factor who made the whole thing work.
"We
got our start at First Fridays, and I've been a big fan of the event for
years," says James Whitehead, owner of Fist Of Flour Pizza Co, a mobile
pizza kitchen. "But there were too many people who didn't know how to
manage trying to manage it, and it was getting crazy. So we bailed out on it.
"Then,
in March of 2014, I got a call from another former vendor who said, 'Hey man,
you should come back. There's somebody organizing it who really knows what
she's doing.' So we did. Sarah spent a lot of effort organizing something that
really didn't have much structure, and we're all wondering what's going to happen
now."
Painter
Erin Crawford adds, "Before Sarah, you had to get there as early as
possible and claim your spot, and then fight to keep it. But she set up a
system where I can go online, pay for my spot, know exactly where it's going to
be, and I won't have to fight for it when I get there.
"But
the biggest difference is that I didn't feel safe before. As a vendor, you feel
very vulnerable, especially at night when the festival is over. After Sarah
took over there was much more security present, and security actually came by
throughout the evening. Sarah herself would walk up and down the street
checking in with us, asking how we were doing and what could be improved upon.
I felt like I had a voice with her."
"Before
every event we would meet and discuss any issues that were anticipated,"
says Lieutenant Christopher Bolton, Oakland Police Department commander at
First Fridays. "Even more importantly, after every event we had a
discussion about how things could be better. It's a good example of what
community policing should be."
"We
didn't go to her; she came to us," adds Captain Howard Holt of the Oakland
Fire Department. "And she came with a detailed plan and made it work for
all of us. She showed a lot of leadership out there."
I'm not
worried about Kidder. With many events to her credit, including working on
Mayor Libby Schaaf's inauguration festival, I'm sure she'll land on her feet.
I wish
the same thing for First Fridays, too, but artist Tony B. Conscious – aka The
Ghetto Van Gogh – is skeptical.
"It was
chaos before Sarah," he says. "She organized the structure and
created the environment for us to really succeed. I don't know anyone else who
can do that."
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