This Sunday is the fourth annual Tacoma Urban Art Festival. For those of us who have watched the art “underground” begin to push its little fronds up through the cracked pavement of this blue-collar dream, there is perhaps a sense of anticipatory stress and bewilderment surrounding the success of grassroots motions such as the UAF.



Can people in a community just stand up and decide they are going to start something? Can you and some of your friends try hard enough to make a dream real? Is it cool to get faded on the streets of Tacoma? If the cooperation of the city and the collaboration of the larger urban art community are any symbol, the answer is yes. Yes, Tacoma, you can do it.



The first ever Urban Art Festival happened in 2005 as an evolution of earlier events its founders had been hosting for several years. Matt and Laura Eklund partnered with DJs Linda Honeck and Johanna Gardner for several “parties” thrown during summer Saturdays in the grass and under the trees of Wright Park.



“We just weren’t getting the attendance we wanted. We really wanted to show the whole city what we were up to,” Matt Eklund told me over a brew at the Parkway Tavern last Tuesday.

He brought with him a three-ring binder bristling with notes, leaflets and timetables. UAF #1 was held on Broadway between South Seventh and South Ninth, mostly centering outside the old Rampart. In my opinion, the event was a screaming success.



I was desperately attempting to become a fashion designer at the time, and for me the festival marked an opportunity not to be missed. I paraded my models all over the place and received more publicity and positive feedback than at any other event that far in my career. You can’t buy that kind of direct customer access, and I couldn’t have dreamed it up. Dammit, Jim, I’m an artist, not an advertising agency. No complaining, our lifestyle is a choice, but being an artist in a consumer driven culture is tricky work. Events such as the Urban Art Festival have walked the fence between providing the public a service (entertainment and access) while promoting the heartfelt expression of an urban culture. The care and love that have been put into the philosophy of the event are combined with a passion for exposing the public at large to things that heretofore have remained in the speakeasy and the garden party of Tacoma’s well hidden underground.



The second year for the festival was a total blowout. The sun beat down like a Catholic school punishment welting the backs of our necks and pushing some to their penitent knees. We Northwestern arts lovers are not acclimated to such direct exposure to the solar flare. Perhaps more people than could be accommodated were corralled into Broadway’s Antique Row like sheep in a bucket — lots of sheep in a block-shaped bucket. Then the worst thing that could have happened happened — at the worst possible time. The beer ran out. A riot almost started when a flaming motorcycle was ghost ridden into the crowd; several people lost limbs. Somehow a beached whale was pulled from the sound by a man with a homemade purple crane. I saw it all happen from the windows of the Silver Stone dance floor, and then I blacked out. I think someone put something in my beer.



Filled with hope and awe at their power to draw a crowd and ignoring my obvious hallucinations, UAF organizers moved last year’s festival, the third in the series, to Fireman’s Park at the base of downtown and spread it out in the adjacent alleyways behind Pacific Avenue. What should have been the moment of truth for the festival’s unknown destiny turned into a bi-polar weather adventure of rapid mood changing diversity. I remember waking up to the sound of heavy rain on my loft roof. I called my compatriot performer, Joel Meyers, and told him we should probably throw in the towel. We were scheduled to rock a strange hybrid musical dance fashion train wreck, and Joel was seasoned enough to know that the show had to go on. “Throw in the towel? More like bring a towel!” The event went as planned, the rain being broken by moments of glorious rainbow-summoning sunshine. Ghastly under-attended, the bitch of a day was still to me the most memorable of the three so far.



Somewhere in the middle of the depressing rain was what we Washingtonians have come to know as the tears of the gods. Nostalgia and a love for the storm outweighed any disappointment in the turnout. To those of you who stayed home or turned around and headed back home: maybe you should move to California, or get some hard-nosed friends like Joel. Wussies.



This brings us to this year’s extravaganza. For the fourth annual Urban Art Festival, the presenters are predicting the weather will find a happy medium between last year’s monsoon and the previous year’s heat wave. Ever learning, the patient founders have opted to again use the Fireman’s Park and surrounding streets, but have evolved the layout into a more compact and approachable footprint.



“Things were a little too spread out last year,” said Eklund, who by this point was relaxing into his beer and starting to get to the dirt behind the festival’s seedy origins. This year, while they expect more people, they want it to feel full and intimate. They have moved one of the stages and the increasingly important beer garden out of the park and into the street near Matador while consolidating the vendors and artists into a walkable corridor — leaving room for artist and vendor parking, which was a difficult issue last year.



Based on what Eklund showed me about the new event design, here’s how I would handle the event:

Parking

The entrance you want to walk through is on the corner of Pacific and South Eighth Street where the Matador and Venture Bank will stand as cubic sentries at the gates to the urban cornucopia beyond. Depending on your hour of arrival, I suggest one of three maneuvers:

1) Pay Diamond Parking rent. There are three lots within a block of the park. In order of most desirable based on location, they are: Pacific Avenue between South Eighth and Ninth, Commerce and South Seventh, and A Street and South 10th.

2) Park for free at the Pierce Transit parking lot at 610 Puyallup Ave. Get on the Link and ride it to the end of the line at South Ninth and Commerce. Walk down the hill and to your left.

3) Drive around aimlessly for free Sunday street parking somewhere downtown. Use up more gas than it cost you to drive to the festival, begin to strike the steering wheel and bonk your head on the grip so your horn beeps and you draw attention to your frustrated attempts at arrival. Squeeze into a parallel parking situation that forces you to revaluate the quality of Vespa scooters.

Route

All three of these options lead you to the same eventuality of removing yourself from your vehicle and hoofing it to the corridor created on South Eighth starting at Pacific. As you enter the festival, note the eastward-facing stage creating a barrier that prevents vehicles from mistaking the festival for a drive-by high-five rally. This is the “Totem” stage, and you should note the timetables provided in order to observe the performances you desire to see. The New Law, experimental trip-hop, noon-1 p.m.; James Whiton and the Downtown Apostles, acid jazz/poetry 1:20-2:30 p.m.; Don’t Tell Sophie, power pop/Indie 3-3:50 p.m.; Little Big Man, reggae 4:20-5:30 p.m.; Flowmotion, funk/rock 6-7:30 p.m.



To your right and ahead several paces, the Skagit River Brewing Company’s green van will have transformed into the beer garden you imagined as a teen-ager. Frothy tan beverages flowing from the belly of the beast like a midsummer’s daydream. From the beer garden facing the water, head left and peruse Art Alley, nestled behind Meconi’s and Capers on Court A. Here you will sample the visual delights of Tacoma’s willing and finest artists. Purchase something for you or your mother.



Art Alley will feed you to the northern most edge of Fireman’s Park where I suggest you take a hairpin right turn entering the de-automated city property. This obvious park entrance is marked by a cobblelike path that leads between grassy pockets toward the Local Life Stage appearing on your right. Also note this stage’s location and consider the times of performances you are unwilling to miss. Joel Meyers, performance art/professional dance, noon-12:25 p.m.; Stephanie Johnson, singer-songwriter 12:30-1 p.m.; Josh Rizeburg with DJ Dragonfoot Killswich, spoken word with DJ 1:10-1:40 p.m.; Can-U with DJ Reign, hip-hop with DJ 2-3 p.m.; Elisabeth Leafe and Friends, tribal fusion belly dancing 3:05-3:30 p.m.; Sister Monk, gypsy funk folk 3:30-4:30 p.m.; Joel Myers, performance art/professional dance 4:35-4:55 p.m.; The Joshua Cain Band, Americana rock ‘n’ roll 5-6 p.m.



Now you are in the heart of Fireman’s Park. Continuing south and to your left, you will see the fruits of collaboration between the Urban Art Festival and a Seattle group called Artifakt. Forty feet of wall will be divided by four graffiti crews, two from Seattle and two from Tacoma, in an all-day free-for-all tagger’s battle to the aerosol death. This should prove to be a highlight of the festival flanked to the south by the Drum and Bass DJ stage driving the masked artists with deep near subsonic whips at 360bpm. DJ Collin, Suga Jones, Nmesub, Amirsol, DJ Subconscious, DJ Habit, and the very right angular Quadrant.



Having explored the park to its southern most edge, turn back to Eighth street and hang a left toward the aforementioned nirvanic beer garden. A gauntlet of 40 vendors offer you their wares of the type found only in festivals such as this. Everything from hemp ware to vegan cosmetics will tantalize you from 10-by-10 awnings as well as sushi from Jazz Bones, tea from the Mad Hat, and soup from the very edible Infinite Soups.



I asked my now happily buzzed event planning wizard if there were any other notable points of interest at this year’s festival, and he jovially replied, “This year we have gone for a high music quality. We wanted to center on the sound and make all the performances really go off. The collaboration with Artifakt is a big deal shout-out to Grays Lumber for the materials to build a 40 foot wall. Also Bonnie Burns is coming out with her mobile hot shop, which fits our root goal of promoting real Tacoma artists.“



Thank you to Matt and Laura Eklund, Linda Honeck, Johanna Gardner, Lisa Fruichantie, and Mandi Webster for working so hard to create a platform for the artists who are hacking out a living here.



Come support the grassiest positive movement since your dad grew his hair out and your mom burned her unmentionables. You won’t be disappointed — even in the rain.

LINK: A review of this year's festival on our blog Spew.



LINK: Urban Art Festival 2008 photos.