Grace Flusche has been working hard since this summer to make Sunday’s 20th anniversary of the Westcott Street Cultural Fair as big as ever without straying far from its roots.

The event is a one-day celebration of the diversity and uniqueness of the Westcott neighborhood, according to the fair’s website. The fair will celebrate with food, visual and performing arts, and activities geared toward families and students, according to the website. The fair, which takes place on Westcott Street between Concord and Dell streets, will run from noon to 6:30 p.m. It will feature approximately 60 booths from community agencies and nonprofit organizations and 45 booths selling works from local crafters.

Most Syracuse University students know the area surrounding Westcott. It’s right off Euclid Avenue, a street known for its raucous MayFest house parties. It features great restaurants such as Alto Cinco and Dorian’s Gourmet Pizza and Deli, as well as the popular consignment shop Boom Babies. Although many students frequent these businesses, many don’t often interact with the permanent community, and this fair gives the opportunity to do so, Flusche said.

Flusche, the chairwoman for this year’s fair, recounted stopping into a now-defunct, used bookstore, Tales Twice Told, 20 years ago in the spring before the first fair was held. She recalled chatting with three other locals: Susan Nathan, the bookstore’s owner; William Knodel, a Westcott Street resident who has been recruiting performers for the fair since the beginning; and Lil Kinney, who passed away in her 90s a few years ago.

Nathan rehashed memories of a street festival she attended in her youth, and the four of them decided that there ought to be a festival of that sort in Syracuse. From that coincidental meeting, the fair came to be. That June of 1991, the four of them held a community meeting to discuss logistics. As Flusche remembers, the first fair was ‘quite magical because it was a gloriously sunny day.’

Performances are a cornerstone of the fair each year. Flusche recalls how hard it was for her to clear the crowds after one the most popular performances in the fair’s history.

‘Last year, at the end, nobody wanted the fair to stop because of the Blacklites performance,’ Flusche said. ‘They just were electric, I mean, people were dancing in the street, and so I finally had to get on the stage and say, ‘You gotta stop! We gotta open the street, cars have got to come through, the fair is over!”

Things have changed since the beginning — the performers are paid for their services, something that long-time chairwoman Barbara Humphrey championed for — but the essence of the fair remains the same. While an Elvis impersonator from the first year’s performance set won’t make it out this Sunday, the Open Hand Theater’s stilts team, who also performed at the first fair, will return to walk in the parade.

Highlights of the fair include a colorful parade to kick off the event that Flusche calls the ‘funky’ parade; Petit Library will be holding a huge book sale inside, in addition to holding a kids corner in its parking lot; over 100 crafters are expected to sell their wares; and belly dancers will strut their stuff both in the parade and on a stage dedicated to the art of belly dancing.

The university plays a big part in the festivities. In addition to university band performances from groups such as Brazilian music ensemble Samba Laranja, the university has also been collaborating through a program called the University Neighborhood Service Agreement Advisory Committee for the past 20 years to bring the community and university together. Part of this collaboration is helping to fundraise for a grant that will financially support the fair, Flusche said.

Mary Desmond, a senior newspaper major, is one of many students from the surrounding neighborhood who plans to attend.She has created an SU bucket list with her roommates, and this is another right of passage to check off the list.

‘My roommate has a list of things we have to do before we leave Syracuse, and the Westcott Street Fair is on it,’ she said. ‘I’d like to see some of the music or dance performances. I also hope there’s face painting.’

scschoen@syr.edu

Published on September 14, 2011 at 12:00 pm