Posted on 06/07/2006 5:41:47 AM PDT by relictele
Black Cultural Festival cancels event for this year The sponsoring group for the 24-year-old celebration comes up short of money to put on the event, but promises to return.
By Laura Dempsey
Staff Writer
The shoestring budget of the Dayton Black Cultural Festival snapped this year, forcing the board to cancel the popular, 24-year-old summertime event.
"This is a huge loss for the community," said Linda Hudson, executive director of the Dayton Black Cultural Festival. "The decision was made a couple of weeks ago, because we just don't have the money and couldn't get enough sponsors. We still owe some of the vendors from last year."
Hudson, who took charge of the festival last year, said the event has always gone forward "with a very small amount of cash."
"We relied on vendor fees and attendance, crossed our fingers and prayed — and for some reason it worked, until last year," she said.
Hudson said previous festivals have been plagued by fights and police calls, spurring the board to change last year's programming in an effort to draw an older, more staid crowd.
"I think that might have hurt us," she said. "We were trying to keep down the conflict with the kids, but maybe people didn't realize there had been a change."
Hudson said the festival board will spend the year seeking major sponsors, hoping to fund a July 2007 festival with 80 percent of its $100,000 budget already in the bank.
"We're looking for an angel out there," Hudson said.
If it was so 'popular' why is was the budget in trouble and the event canceled?
Previous festivals plagued by fights and police calls...does this make it more popular or less popular?
is was s/b is
What if they gave a Black Cultural Festival and nobody showed up.It also disproves the canard, If you build it - they will come.
Well, seems that makes it more popular amongst attendees and less popular amongst their patrons.
"If it was so 'popular' why is was the budget in trouble and the event canceled?"
Apparently the organizers need to make a pitch for tax dollars. Justice demands that the people in the suburbs should be paying for this festival anyway. (/s)
How about a Honky Cultural Festival? Oh, sorry, that's just not PC.
They haven't paid last year's vendors and are surprised they didn't show up this year?
I guess it was really "popular", so much so that vendors withheld their products...........
No way!! in Dayton???
"Popular" with the wrong demographics. People without extra cash, people "crying out for help" by causing problems, ...
I've been to those -- lots of beer and brots -- and OompPaPa music!
Well, cheese, it's the Dayton Daily News. What did you expect?
Wouldn't Oktoberfest, Celtic Festivals, etc., count? We have lots of those that I enjoy attending around Texas....
Give it a rest.
As a former resident of the Dayton metro area I have long been tempted to write a vanity post about that paper. Everyone thinks their local paper is the most left-leaning rag since Pravda but the DDN is a strong contender by anyone's standards.
Positioned in a city that is visibly dying every day thanks to the usual suspects it has maintained its communist - there's no other word for it - stance on many issues from the 60s (when they were 'stylish' ideas) to the present day. I have often been left temporarily speechless by the ideas held and espoused by some of their editorial writers, especially Martin 'Comrade' Gottlieb, who has grown a bushy salt-n-pepper beard like his heroes Marx & Engels.
Southwest Ohio is one of the nation's top 10 growth areas and greater Cincinnati is growing north at an incredible rate (see also: illegals working for homebuilder busted in Cincinnati) - the unending sprawl of development (that we fled) is now approaching the south suburbs of Dayton. Still, the Dayton area looks like the hole of a donut as far as investment, development and rehab of brownfields goes. The DDN's shiny new printing/distribution center is NOT in Dayton, but in Warren County to the south. When GM inevitably decides to pack it in look out below.
Dayton's local/state/federal politicians (Rhine McLin et al) don't get the headlines of Sheila Jackson Lee, Maxine Waters or good old Cynthia McKinney but you can bet that they share the same style of 'leadership' and receive plaudits from the DDN while the city literally crumbles around them both.
Same old same old. Oakland's "Festival of the Lake" devolved into a brawl year after year until it was finally put down. Most people don't want to be around large crowds of young black people who are drinking and partying because the liklihood of violence, abuse, and crime are too high. Any event designed to attract such a crowd is living on borrowed time from the get-go. Facts are stubborn things.
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