Well! Just when you thought it was going to be another boring Saturday in dreary old Manhattan... it's time for The East Village Visiting Neighbors Festival on Fourth Avenue, starting at East 14th Street ...
Vendors were just setting up when we passed through on our inspection... you will find the usual farm-to-table calzones... and handcrafted hair scrunchies...
Previously on EV Grieve:
Street fair! Street fair! Street fair!
Street fair! Street fair! Street fair!
Street fair! Street fair! Street fair!
Street fair! Street fair! Street fair!
Street fair! Street fair! Street fair!
hair scrunchies ?? i'm there !!
ReplyDeleteWhy can't we get rid of these? Seriously, anyone know why we're stuck with them?
ReplyDeleteSo I guess only places like Iowa, Ohio and other states that can't afford to put more letters and consonants in their state names should have fairs? They have State fairs, we have Street fairs, and while the vendor selection often sucks, at least it gets rid of the car traffic and allows you to walk for a mile with a little more open space.
ReplyDeleteI know you won't find those little luxuries you're probably used to like froyo on on a hoof, or lard stuffed Mexican biscuits with gooseberry jam, or pomme frites loaded with 1000 calories of pomegranate peppercorn mayo, but the free kettle corn samples and fire roasted corn are pretty good, and these fairs get people out in the neigborhood and walking around. See you there!
What a street fair in NYC be without those goddamn sausage and pepper trucks
ReplyDelete"Festival"????
ReplyDeleteI admit to the crime of buying kettle corn & receiving free paper towel rolls
ReplyDelete@Billsville, I think you're a little confused. These street fair are run by corporations using minimum wage workers. What most of us want are authentic neighborhood street fairs by active locals, not an imposed roving food court with imported knick-knacks. Put your hatred aside for a moment.
ReplyDeleteI've bought some cool stuff at these street fairs over the years. Art, bags, clothes. For those of us who don't have summer homes or parents to fly us back to the family cornfield, it's nice to have something low key to do on the weekends. The flea markets were fun too until they were deemed too gauche for NYC2000.
ReplyDeleteThe street fairs are subsidized. They were an invention of the 1970s (Ford to city "Drop Dead") for a bit of employment, etc.. The guy who runs them is a millionaire. Most likely, he knows who to grease to continue the sham. So you are paying (via taxes) to have the fairs.
ReplyDeleteThe Daily News (I think it was them?) did an article on the topic a few years back.
I think we'd all love a real street fair with independent vendors and interesting things to eat, do and buy that are unique to the occasion/ area. And if it's true that we are subsidizing a millionaire to personally bastardize and ruin street fairs that's even worse.
ReplyDeleteBT, here is that Daily News article:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.nydailynews.com/archives/opinions/time-curb-one-way-street-fairs-article-1.614644
"A street fair should be something unique," says Jonathan Bowles, director of the nonprofit Center for an Urban Future. But a recent study by his organization found that just three companies run the lion's share of our fairs."
How can we get real street fairs when this one (its the same one just moving around) gets all the energy, subsidies, permits, etc...?
ReplyDeleteI actually stopped by, and it wasn't so bad. More variety than usual. For once, they didn't have the sheets though, which is what I needed :-).
Anyone can rent a space and sell at thse street fairs, I used to run a small business and do a dozen of them a year, and if you have the right products you can make real money. It's not easy work but can pay well, so the rumor that vendors are not independent or local is false. Also we have had street fairs in NYC for a hundred years, in little Italy it's San Genarro and the Feast of St Anthony's, among others.
ReplyDeleteStreet fairs of the past are fearured in many movies, most famously in Godfather II in the scene where a young Vito Corleone does the hit on the local mobster Dan Fanucci during the feast of San Genarro which started in the mid 1920s.
There was a great street fair on Avenue C or D a month or so ago, the Loisaida festival, complete with pony rides for kids and great live salsa music, maybe if the organizers would put more time in and bring back the entertainment and other stuff people would be happier about them, but I'll take what comes until then. See you at the fair!
Ridolph 3:19pm -- Nothing stops locals from participating in street fairs, but if more did, what would we have? Bodegas selling stale Pringles? Restaurants moving tables into the street? As long as street fairs are about selling things, this is what they'll be. The way to make them local is to remove the vendors completely.
ReplyDelete"visiting Neighbors Festival." This is one of my favorite lines of all time. And very appropriate. Visiting from god knows where, to sell sausages and socks.
ReplyDelete