A look at what's going on in Trinidad, on H Street, and in the larger area north of Capitol Hill.
Sunday, September 19, 2010
How Many?
I haven't heard any official estimate of the people for yesterday's festival. I know that we had about 15,000 people turn out for the 2009 festival. So what are your guesses for this year's turnout?
19 comments:
Chris
said...
It seemed much more crowded than last year to me and my gf; definitely when we wandered out of the street and into bars along the street, they were packed and they weren't last year. Some of that may have been the Jersey walls compressing things down on the west end; but we picked up two extra blocks in that direction too. I'll double last year's figure, 30k.
I second the 30K figure. I remember having plenty of room to move last year but this year we could barely walk around, especially between 12th and 14th. Perhaps there were more vendors as well causing the space issues? Regardless, thanks to everyone who organized the event. My family had a great time. I hope the bars and restaurants made some serious money, especially the ones who have experienced slowdowns due to construction.
I hate to even bring this up, but from looking through the pictures, it looks like 90 or 95% of the crowd is white. I was going back and forth and finally decided to comment because I'm worried that if Mr. Gray becomes mayor, he may try to cement his base of support by being "anti-gentrification." Was Mr. Gray's campaign at the festival?
I was *actually at* the festival and I can say without hesitation that the crowd was pretty evenly mixed with both black and white (and asian, and latino, etc., etc.) having a great time.
There was truly an eclectic mix that worked wonderfully together: from the soul singers on the mainstage singing Motown classics (they were really good btw -- this coming from an admitted jaded music critic) to the Baltimore Opera and DDP's pie eating contest. You would have never known there was a race-baiting mayoral election that just happened from the way everyone was getting on together. Truly impressed with the whole scene and the good vibes everyone displayed.
I honestly don't know what pics you're looking at, but if I were you I would not make such a comment unless I was actually at the event. If you didn't know what the makeup was, you would be better served asking people who were there rather than making a snap decision based on a few photos.
Rob, I'm not sure if his campaign was there, but I'm told that he was there. I really doubt that's the track Gray will take.
And the festival was pretty mixed overall. No way it was 90% white. I'll keep posting more photos. Maybe your impression will change after you see more.
Yup. I'll concur with JJ and Inked. The crowd at the festival was one of the *more* diverse crowds that I've seen around DC in some time. Lots of mingling, and a friendly crowd all around.
There was one guy carrying some sort of anti-gentrification sign at the east end of the street, which made me feel a bit awkward. Fortunately, for the most part, the redevelopment of the H St area has taken place on vacant or abandoned lots... it's probably one of the more innocuous gentrifications that have taken place in the US.
Awesome awesome festival and I was thinking the whole time how great it was to see such a mixed crowd. I saw the sign guy too, in fact he was among the very first people I ran into and my take on him was that he looked like a fool. He kept his sign folded up most of the time and when he did show it, the people I saw walking by him just had a "wtf kind of loser is this guy?" look on their faces. Only suggestion would be to turn don the volume on the stages but I'm getting to be an older person so that's just me.
crowd looked pretty diverse to me. don't know how anyone could say it was 90% white. i did keep an eye out for Gray, but apparently he can only be outside after sundown im told.
Gray was there. I don't know if he got to enjoy the hand dancing. It was a great festival, and a terrific crowd. The church on the corner of 11th had people doing the slide in the street. Was there a program or map of the festival? I never saw one.
It was a very diverse crowd in race, age and socio-ecomomics. Food was affordable to everyone. You could a hot dog for $1. People just seemed to be having a good time. It was good to see a lot of the deaf community out too.
At first, I thought that it had to be twice as big as last year. But after spending a while there Saturday, I'm convinced it had to be closer to three times as many people as last year.
Diversity is such a beautiful thing...I think anyone, black, white or any other color who now doubts that all types of people from all backgrounds cannot live in harmony really needs to come to our great H Street neighborhood. The next time someone starts race baiting on this blog, please remind them of the H Street Festival. We truly are more alike than not! I absolutely love living in this neighborhood!
Gray was there. I actually talked to him and he was very personable and upbeat about the festival.
I don't recall Fenty ever attending, at least not the past 4 years I have been. I won't be an arrogant @ss and say he was never there, just that I never saw him.
Why hate Gray before we even give him a chance. I mean, I voted for Fenty but now it’s time to embrace the new guy and see what happens.
One thing I love about the H st. festival is the fact that the vendors are, for the most part, businesses on or close to H st. (save the food trucks). Is there a way to make sure it stays that way? I would hate to see the festival look like every other street fair in DC with the exact same non-descript Asian/elephant ear/deep fried Twinky vendors pushing out the local businesses.
Anybody else have thoughts on this?
Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go deep fry a Twinky.
PS. SO excited for all the new restaurants opening up. Queen Vic and Smith's are on my must list.
PPS. Great to see Jorge from Napa out with the taco's.
Hey JJ, I was looking at Inked's pictures (imagine that....) That's why I said that my impression was from looking at the pictures. I looked at quite a few (i.e. > 50) of them despite my internet connection being slow. I guarantee you 90+% of the people in those pictures I viewed are white.
I'm glad the crowd actually was diverse. Seeing how I'm a 13 hour plane ride away from H St., I didn't have the luxury of popping over to enjoy the festival and see for myself.
You could say that by posting my (polite, non-confrontational) comment, I *was* asking people who were there. Gee, looks like I made a mistake assuming that the pictures I looked at were a representative sample. Who better to set it straight for me than readers of FT?
But true to form in the comments section of this blog, I got your comment in reply. That's why I led with "I hate to say this" because I knew in the back of my mind that it wouldn't be possible to discuss the topic like adults. Next time I'll take your sage advice and email my friends.
Hey Jamie, You see what you are looking for, right? You were not here, and you didn't think that the festival should be happening on your religious holiday therefore something had to be negative about event. Maybe next year you will attend and see the real event.
Rob is right. I had the same impression. It may not be 90%, but 60% - 70% white. Just looks at the pics posted.
Count the people...count the black and divide. Real simple math.
You'll find 50%+ more whites. That is a higher proportion than the city makeup. This will anger many black folks. They do not like non-African Americans "taking over" chocolate city or at high levels of government (think Police Chief and School Chan).
Like it or not, Gray will appoint African Americans to his heads of office and he will avoid at all costs that he is catering to the whites by slowing down gentrification. If he doesn't, he won't get re-elected in 4 years; regardless of his accomplishments.
I'm glad to hear all races, ages, etc came together at the festival. However, there still racism rampant in this city.
The preliminary unofficial numbers I'm hearing tossed around are 30-35k for this year. That's a pretty large increase.
The funny thing about using a handful of pics to deduce the racial makeup of a large event isn't that it's not that accurate. I could possibly find five photos with only (or at least overwhelmingly) white, or only (or overwhelmingly) black, people in them. Would they accurately depict parts of the Festival? Yes. Would they give you an idea of the whole racial makeup? Not a very accurate one.
Photos can lie because we can see it and believe it's real. We just sometimes forget that it's only part of the overall picture.
19 comments:
It seemed much more crowded than last year to me and my gf; definitely when we wandered out of the street and into bars along the street, they were packed and they weren't last year. Some of that may have been the Jersey walls compressing things down on the west end; but we picked up two extra blocks in that direction too. I'll double last year's figure, 30k.
I second the 30K figure. I remember having plenty of room to move last year but this year we could barely walk around, especially between 12th and 14th. Perhaps there were more vendors as well causing the space issues? Regardless, thanks to everyone who organized the event. My family had a great time. I hope the bars and restaurants made some serious money, especially the ones who have experienced slowdowns due to construction.
Who would be the right person to send a message to about not scheduling it on Yom Kippur next year?
My family and I really wanted to go, but...
I'm in Israel, so I was very aware of this fact...Yom Kippur is in October next year, right? At least next year there's no worry of that happening...
I hate to even bring this up, but from looking through the pictures, it looks like 90 or 95% of the crowd is white.
I was going back and forth and finally decided to comment because I'm worried that if Mr. Gray becomes mayor, he may try to cement his base of support by being "anti-gentrification."
Was Mr. Gray's campaign at the festival?
Rob,
I was *actually at* the festival and I can say without hesitation that the crowd was pretty evenly mixed with both black and white (and asian, and latino, etc., etc.) having a great time.
There was truly an eclectic mix that worked wonderfully together: from the soul singers on the mainstage singing Motown classics (they were really good btw -- this coming from an admitted jaded music critic) to the Baltimore Opera and DDP's pie eating contest. You would have never known there was a race-baiting mayoral election that just happened from the way everyone was getting on together. Truly impressed with the whole scene and the good vibes everyone displayed.
I honestly don't know what pics you're looking at, but if I were you I would not make such a comment unless I was actually at the event. If you didn't know what the makeup was, you would be better served asking people who were there rather than making a snap decision based on a few photos.
Rob,
I'm not sure if his campaign was there, but I'm told that he was there. I really doubt that's the track Gray will take.
And the festival was pretty mixed overall. No way it was 90% white. I'll keep posting more photos. Maybe your impression will change after you see more.
Yup. I'll concur with JJ and Inked. The crowd at the festival was one of the *more* diverse crowds that I've seen around DC in some time. Lots of mingling, and a friendly crowd all around.
There was one guy carrying some sort of anti-gentrification sign at the east end of the street, which made me feel a bit awkward. Fortunately, for the most part, the redevelopment of the H St area has taken place on vacant or abandoned lots... it's probably one of the more innocuous gentrifications that have taken place in the US.
Awesome awesome festival and I was thinking the whole time how great it was to see such a mixed crowd. I saw the sign guy too, in fact he was among the very first people I ran into and my take on him was that he looked like a fool. He kept his sign folded up most of the time and when he did show it, the people I saw walking by him just had a "wtf kind of loser is this guy?" look on their faces. Only suggestion would be to turn don the volume on the stages but I'm getting to be an older person so that's just me.
crowd looked pretty diverse to me. don't know how anyone could say it was 90% white. i did keep an eye out for Gray, but apparently he can only be outside after sundown im told.
Gray was there. I don't know if he got to enjoy the hand dancing. It was a great festival, and a terrific crowd. The church on the corner of 11th had people doing the slide in the street. Was there a program or map of the festival? I never saw one.
It was a very diverse crowd in race, age and socio-ecomomics. Food was affordable to everyone. You could a hot dog for $1. People just seemed to be having a good time. It was good to see a lot of the deaf community out too.
At first, I thought that it had to be twice as big as last year. But after spending a while there Saturday, I'm convinced it had to be closer to three times as many people as last year.
So, my guess is 45-50k.
Diversity is such a beautiful thing...I think anyone, black, white or any other color who now doubts that all types of people from all backgrounds cannot live in harmony really needs to come to our great H Street neighborhood. The next time someone starts race baiting on this blog, please remind them of the H Street Festival. We truly are more alike than not! I absolutely love living in this neighborhood!
Gray was there. I actually talked to him and he was very personable and upbeat about the festival.
I don't recall Fenty ever attending, at least not the past 4 years I have been. I won't be an arrogant @ss and say he was never there, just that I never saw him.
Why hate Gray before we even give him a chance. I mean, I voted for Fenty but now it’s time to embrace the new guy and see what happens.
One thing I love about the H st. festival is the fact that the vendors are, for the most part, businesses on or close to H st. (save the food trucks). Is there a way to make sure it stays that way? I would hate to see the festival look like every other street fair in DC with the exact same non-descript Asian/elephant ear/deep fried Twinky vendors pushing out the local businesses.
Anybody else have thoughts on this?
Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go deep fry a Twinky.
PS. SO excited for all the new restaurants opening up. Queen Vic and Smith's are on my must list.
PPS. Great to see Jorge from Napa out with the taco's.
Hey JJ, I was looking at Inked's pictures (imagine that....) That's why I said that my impression was from looking at the pictures. I looked at quite a few (i.e. > 50) of them despite my internet connection being slow. I guarantee you 90+% of the people in those pictures I viewed are white.
I'm glad the crowd actually was diverse. Seeing how I'm a 13 hour plane ride away from H St., I didn't have the luxury of popping over to enjoy the festival and see for myself.
You could say that by posting my (polite, non-confrontational) comment, I *was* asking people who were there. Gee, looks like I made a mistake assuming that the pictures I looked at were a representative sample. Who better to set it straight for me than readers of FT?
But true to form in the comments section of this blog, I got your comment in reply. That's why I led with "I hate to say this" because I knew in the back of my mind that it wouldn't be possible to discuss the topic like adults. Next time I'll take your sage advice and email my friends.
Hey Jamie,
You see what you are looking for, right? You were not here, and you didn't think that the festival should be happening on your religious holiday therefore something had to be negative about event. Maybe next year you will attend and see the real event.
Rob is right. I had the same impression. It may not be 90%, but 60% - 70% white. Just looks at the pics posted.
Count the people...count the black and divide. Real simple math.
You'll find 50%+ more whites. That is a higher proportion than the city makeup. This will anger many black folks. They do not like non-African Americans "taking over" chocolate city or at high levels of government (think Police Chief and School Chan).
Like it or not, Gray will appoint African Americans to his heads of office and he will avoid at all costs that he is catering to the whites by slowing down gentrification. If he doesn't, he won't get re-elected in 4 years; regardless of his accomplishments.
I'm glad to hear all races, ages, etc came together at the festival. However, there still racism rampant in this city.
The preliminary unofficial numbers I'm hearing tossed around are 30-35k for this year. That's a pretty large increase.
The funny thing about using a handful of pics to deduce the racial makeup of a large event isn't that it's not that accurate. I could possibly find five photos with only (or at least overwhelmingly) white, or only (or overwhelmingly) black, people in them. Would they accurately depict parts of the Festival? Yes. Would they give you an idea of the whole racial makeup? Not a very accurate one.
Photos can lie because we can see it and believe it's real. We just sometimes forget that it's only part of the overall picture.
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