Portland’s biggest “alternative” event is about to get its own alternative. Street vendors who hawk their goods at the massive monthly Last Thursday festival on NE Alberta are setting up their own, separate event: HUMPDAY.
The fully-permitted street art event is slated to take place every second Wednesday (starting August 8th) on the block of SE 9th Avenue between Belmont and Taylor.
Portlander Michael O’Connor had been working as a representative of art vendors during the process to bring some order to Last Thursday. The city has been spending $10,000 a month during the summer to shut down the street for the overwhelming arts event while numerous people have proposed different fixes for the festival (moment to reflect on Mayor Sam Adam’s baller response to opposition to him making change: “I. Just. Did.”). But O’Connor felt keeping the event profitable for the small fry craft vendors was a lost cause. “I came to the conclusion that if I want to provide solutions for this, I needed to look outside the neighborhood and start a whole new event,” says O’Connor. “Twenty to thirty thousand people is just too many people. The first-come, first-serve free-for-all has created issues and the artists have been making less and less money. The people who make the most money at that event are food vendors.”
O’Connor and a group of vendors are starting up Humpday to feel more like old-school Last Thursday in SE Industrial. However, unlike Last Thursday, vendors will be asked to pay for their spaces (starting at $20) and O’Connor is hoping to raise donations from nearby businesses like Green Dragon. The cost of putting together the event, including paying for permits and port-a-potties, is about $1,500, says O’Connor.
Will Humpday save Last Thursday? Will SE Industrial become the new Alberta? Will this event even get off the group or will it slip, like a drunk stilt-walker, into the abyss of good ideas?
I’m excited to bring some space and profit back to the small fry craft vendors as long as we don’t forget about the drunken hordes and food carts.
So Last Thursday was so dead set on maintaining the free-for-all that they actually drove away the real vendors?
And despite all the gnashing of teeth from Last Thursday boosters that charging vendors would destroy the very roots of western civilization, the vendors themselves were willing to pay a small fee all along? So much so that they actually started another event, differentiated mostly by their very willingness to get a permit and pay a fee?
Why would the Green Dragon pay for this? IDGI
@tcraighenry Because the event will (ideally) bring business down to their neighborhood?
If any of these vendors could make anything worth buying, why by gosh golly, they could maybe turn a profit.
@Michelle They don’t need it. The place is always packed. With people that wash and don’t make vagina ornaments out of cat hair.
@TIFF: I WANT TO BUY VAGINA ORNAMENTS.
Hey there it’s Michael O’Connor. We are trying to look at this as a platform for economic development. If we can produce a festival that is an enjoyable experience, thousands of people will come to the business district we put it in. We want to try to circulate money to the ground floor of entrepreneurial efforts on the street vending level. We want our artists, musicians and other creative entrepreneurs to become more successful at doing something they love. We are trying to see the broader structure of the way money gets circulated so we can make better use of it.
I wish them luck though I rarely ever see anything I really need or want to buy. I’m not as artsy inclined as some people.
Blabby- It was never the intention to make Last Thursday a venue for “real” vendors. We welcomed artists selling their art, street performers and buskers. The “real” vendors, especially the ones selling commercial goods, never did all that well financially during LT, other then food vendors. Many of them would love it if they were allowed to reserve a space, even if it cost some money. That would drive the more marginal vendors away and leave more money for the commercial vendors. Most artist vendors come specifically cause it’s free. Last Thursday was always meant as a cool place for art and artists, not a place for consumerism.
As a 9-year resident of the Alberta Arts District, I have seen the Last Thursday Art Walk go from being a cool artist street fair to a wild, uncontrolled mob scene so crowded and without aim or theme that there’s little hope of getting access to even consider a vendor’s ware’s. I worry about getting knocked over or stuck in an immovable horde or getting my ears blasted by the grating noise of some pop-up bands that probably don’t have permits to play there in the first place. I miss the old cool scene where thoughtful artists could talk to you, tell their stories, and build actual connections with buyers/vistors. We have created a beast.