From Our Founder
The Wizard of Oz
Festival officially christened their new location at Porter County
Fairgrounds this past weekend. While attendance figures have yet to be
published, unofficially it appears participation was no where near what
occurred in Chesterton (former home of the festival) and short of
expectations.
I have previously
shared my thoughts on this matter, but I think they bear repeating.
I think the whole
situation speaks volumes to the festival issue in general. The genesis
of a festival (in Porter & LaPorte Counties: popcorn, pork, steel
wheels, oz, scare crow, pumpkin, Greek and others) was to gather the
community in celebration to showcase its "wares" and invite those from
without the community to visit and enjoy leaving their "foreign capital"
behind (foreign capital defined as "money from outside the local
economy"). It was an event that was supposed to inject new money into
the local economy while putting a town on the map (identity) and
offering everyone a good time.
What has happen to some (most?) of the festivals
is that they have become a business unto themselves in some cases having
little or nothing to do with the town in which they are hosted. They
have unintentionally forced local businesses to close during the
festival and drive away local residents who are fed up with the noise &
congestion & filth. They've become magnets for traveling/mobile vendors
from without the community, the area, the County, or even the State who
pay their fee and set up their booth transforming downtowns into flee
markets of sorts. You don't have to be in theme, the craft does not have
to be hand made, your product/service can compete with a local church or
civic organization, heck you can even showcase toys that use FOOD as
ammunition... the only standards are the fee paid for the booth/table,
the inspection for health/safety if you're serving food, and that's
about it. Is it not telling when the most newsworthy event surrounding
the recent Popcorn fest was the rules associated with the open
consumption of alcohol?
What happens therefore is that the "outside
vendors" prey upon the wallets of the local economy and depart at day's
end with the local money in their pockets leaving the cleanup to the
local authorities (As in Dr. Suess's "Sneeches on the Beaches"). I have
often wondered if the towns even get paid for the added security and the
clean up required. I've often thought that if you factored the municipal
costs along with the downtown loss of business you might discover that
the festival really did not make as much money as everyone thinks. Don't
know for certain, just something I wondered...
Sometimes I think we're just festivaled-out. The
festival was a great idea that just got out of hand and what they're
facing now is the law of diminishing returns. Do you realize that
starting with the LaPorte County Fair in JULY, there is not one single
weekend until mid-October where there is NOT a festival or Fair in the
Tri-County region... again, I often wonder when the local economy gets
"tapped" and can't afford it any more... and I wonder where else that
local money could be going to grow a local community instead of the
pockets of traveling vendors... and I wonder if the countless volunteer
hours are better invested?
My sense is that
the Oz festival may prove to be the "tipping point" forcing other
festivals to re-examine why they even exist. I also hope it forces local
cities and towns to examine the "soft cost" of providing additional
security and clean-up while inconveniencing the resident taxpayers and
interrupting the business of local merchants.
