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buzz Editorial
Try again Campustown Streetfest
4:00 am Jun 12 - by buzz Editorial Staff
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(Issac Bloom, buzz Photographer)
This past Saturday, Green Street hosted the first annual Campustown Streetfest. And no one came.
Among the few attractions, Smoothie King and Cold Stone Creamery handed out free samples, live bands played to a scattered crowd, penned animals pooped on the hot concrete, and a clown entertained passersby; the latter two things you would otherwise never see on Green Street prior to the apocalypse.
So why was this event nothing like CU’s flourishing festivals in the summer? The answer: It targeted the wrong demographic.
By attempting to link Campustown with downtown Champaign and Urbana, organizers of the Streetfest tried to conceal the very core of what gives Campustown it’s identity: cheap food, bars and proximity to campus. This area exists because it’s a place where nine-month residents go to mingle after class in pursuit of ass.
Campustown is an area specifically designed to meet the needs of students. It’s where they live, play, eat, drink and spend their money. Look at the new developments on Green Street: the towering buildings are meant to house students or support student life.
It’s no surprise that a festival designed to bring in families and young children would fail. The Campustown Business Association organized this event in an attempt to drum up business during the summer dry spell, but they went about it in entirely the wrong way.
If the CBA really wanted to use a festival to bring in the bucks during the summer months, we here at buzz have a few suggestions:
1. Accept your demographic — Green Street thrives on student life, in all its economic splendor. Summer months means fewer students, but summer sessions and local young adults still make up a large portion of this town’s population. The Green Street area was designed for young adults, and bringing in more of these should be the goal of any festival held there. In fact, having a festival that is specifically geared to this demographic is actually a great idea, and would make future Streetfests stand out from the more family friendly environments of the Sweetcorn Festival or Taste of CU.
2. Drinking outside during the festival — Since Green Street is lined with bars it makes sense that drinking would be a part of any Campustown festival. Sweetcorn Festival’s beer tent is a perfect complement to the featured live performers, so why can’t Campustown do it too? Just because Unofficial St. Patrick’s Day festivities have gotten out of hand in the past doesn’t mean that a summer festival would be a repeat. After all, this festival would invite the same people who hang around the tamer downtown Champaign and Urbana bars.
3. Later hours — an older demographic would show up and it would be more appropriate for the atmosphere that makes up Green Street.
4. More booths — it was a festival with almost nothing there. It made sense for restaurants that were sponsoring to not have booths in front of their restaurants, and bars not to have beer booths outside of their doors, but there needs to be something. Fairs and festivals are fun because you can eat, drink, and see things that are not found in everyday life. When something that is part of everyday life for many wants to celebrate itself, it is going to have to pull out all the stops — free food, free drinks, reduced prices on goods and services, you know, to motivate people to actually show up.
buzz wants there to be another thriving festival in this town as much as anyone else, but it seems to us that an event that attempts to bring children to the doors of campus bars is not the way to go about it. It’s time for Campustown to celebrate its unique identity, not hide it. <
Sound Off
Last post: Aug. 19, 2008 at 3:01 pm
JontheCubsfan (Jon Hansen) said on Jun. 13, 2008 at 3:45 pm:
Um, I don't know where to start commenting on this article. Other than to say that it is way off on nearly every point.
Starting with the lead. The lead is very "creative." How attention grabbing, short and consise! I bet whoever wrote the lead was really proud.
Except it was wrong. Very wrong. What time of day was Buzz there? 11am during the intense rain shower? Sure, at that point in time, no one was there. But by 1pm there was a fairly large crowd spread out between 5th and Wright Street on Green. When the Corn Desert Ramblers were playing at 1 here at IMC, they had at least 20-30 people relaxing and listening to the music and cooling off. By 3, the streets were pretty crowded in front of our building here, and down by the petting zoo. And when Santa was rocking out right in front of our building, a nice size crowd was braving the 90 degree sun, watching from the scorching blacktop.
And now to the rest of the article.
1. Accept your demographic- I don't really even know what this means. Have you ever run a business? Do you know how to manage something that needs to make money to survive? Businesses should always strive to expand their clientele, especially during months when their typical demographic is generally not around. Accept your demographic? Really easy to say when you aren't the one struggling to make ends meet in the summer.
2. Drinking outside during the festival- The event was geared towards bringing families into campustown. What better way to turn families off from the area then serving liquor in the street. Sure, more students or 20 somethings may have shown up if there was liquor, but that wasn't the point of the event. The business association wanted families. And if that isn't your idea of a good time in campustown, tough luck. It wasn't your event. Plan your own campustown event with booze if you so please. (And even if the event had wanted liquor, it is very hard to get the city of Champaign to cooperate and issue a license.)
3. Later hours- No huge objections here. The event was planned within the past six weeks, and the Campustown business association wanted to start the event on a smaller scale. Perhaps in future years there will be longer hours.
4. More booths-- Again, small start. Additionally, some of the entertainment that was planned had to be cancelled due to the rain.
The editors note in the actual Buzz Magazine, not here on the web, alluded to the Buzz being a major sponsor for the event. In what regard? A logo on a few ads? Ad placement in the magazine? I'm going to assume no one who wrote this editorial was part of the planning of the event or had any inside scoop on what was going on. In fact, having been to a lot of the planning meetings, I know Buzz was not involved. Which is fine! They didn't need to be there. But if Buzz was such a major sponsor where was your input before June 7th? If they were"hoping for a great event," why did they not offer any help into the planning of the event? It's so easy to critique an event after the fact. This buzz article = thursday morning quarterback.
There were a lot of people at this event for its inaugural year. We passed out over 1,000 raffle tickets here at WPGU, we painted dozens of kids' faces, we went through nearly 500 water balloons, and hosted hundreds of people in our lobby for a brief moment to cool off and enjoy music. Could that solitary girl with the ice cream cone on your cover really have popped all those balloons on her own?
Please get your facts straight.
(Editor's note, or whatever its called: Though I work as Operations Manager of WPGU, this post is in no way a WPGU response to the article. This is just my humble opinion as someone who was very involved in the event, and very pleased with how it went. I find most Buzz content to be great and accurate. But they were off the mark with this editorial.)
Duckie (Loren Pullum) said on Jun. 13, 2008 at 7:08 pm:
To the above comment: Thank you for writing what I had been trying to put into words about the inaccuracy of this buzz article. I was at Streetfest all day working at Potbelly and at WPGU and I was really proud of how hard everyone was working and that I was able to be a part of it.
To the above article: Those kids and their families really enjoyed the festivities and i myself was happy that it was not an event that catered to the usual drunk and sloppy crowd that I have been a part of in the past.
JontheCubsfan (Jon Hansen) said on Jun. 18, 2008 at 1:47 pm:
I just wanted to clear up a few quick things.
1) I think the Buzz is great, and hold no ill feelings towards the staff in any way.
2) When I said that "the Buzz" was not a part of planning the event or participating in it, I was wrong. Dawn Longfellow is the IMC marketing director, and plays a large role in marketing for Buzz. She was instrumental in planning this event, more so than anyone else in our company. Without Dawn, IMC as a whole would not have participated in the event.
Additionally, Dawn has an awesome staff that also ran the informational booth--and other thankless tasks--on the day of the event. They were huge in helping out!
So, the Buzz marketing staff did in fact help out and plan, and were instrumental in doing so.
Erin (unregistered user) said on Aug. 19, 2008 at 2:35 pm:
In defense of the street fest, it was filled with glorious free crap. I obtained the following:
-A children's Hot Chocolate, sticker, and dark chocolate from Starbucks
-Two tubes of chapstick, temporary tattoo, and bookmark from Noodles & Co.
-A beer cozy from Custom Cuts
-Two water bottles from Potbelly
-Smoothie sample from Smoothie King
-Two free ice cream samples from Cold Stone
-A cookie, lemonade, and temporary tattoos from Penn Station
and...
-Pizza from One World
Any festival where I get a lot of free stuff is a festival for this broke college student.
Jeff Brandt (Jeff Brandt) said on Jun. 12, 2008 at 5:59 pm:
Yeah, I'm around this summer, but I can't say I took the event seriously since it sounded from WPGU commercials like the main attractions were "inflatables" and people making animal balloons. If they had beer, it would have been an instant hit.