Porchfestito Thoughts

[Tom Reiter]

Thanks for the feedback; we haven't gotten any negative feedback, so I think we should try and do it again next year.  I wanted to put down a few thoughts about next year so that people can think about things before we start planning early next year.

ATTENDANCE:  I think that attendance was pretty good, although I think that we could actually have accommodated 2x or 3x the crowd we had pretty comfortably.  It also seemed like a fairly low percentage of residents actively took part.  It seems like A LOT of people were out of town, I guess either for Mothers' Day or to avoid Porchfestito!  

Attendance is THE key issue for planning...while I'd like to invite the whole neighborhood rather than just our block, I have no idea how to do that without running the risk of having 5,000 people show up, which we don't have the space or resources to accommodate.  See notes below about attendance for the various planning options.

Anyway there are a few planning options for next year:

CLOSE THE BLOCK, HAVE LIVE MUSIC:  This was the original plan for this year, but as mentioned in previous e-mails, I think it is completely impracticable.  Under DC rules to have ANY event with ANY live music, you have to have a "Special Events" permit, which is very different from a "Block Party" permit:  to even apply for the permit, we'd have to have a special license, then we have to apply six months in advance, and we'd need to have insurance, security, portapotties, etc.  Maybe it would be worth it if we wanted to attract 5,000 people, but we don't, so I think this option is off the table.

DON'T CLOSE THE BLOCK, HAVE LIVE MUSIC:  This is what we did this year, and it worked out pretty well.  Since we didn't close the block and you don't need permission to have live music on private property, we didn't need a permit.  Blocking off the parking spaces in front of 1724 was pretty crucial, and that worked pretty well, although we might consider slightly expanding the no parking zone to include the opposite side of the street in front of 1724.  Also, even if we don't apply for a permit, I think we should get signatures like we did this year, mainly to ensure that people are aware of the event and can make plans to attend (or leave town!).  

The main problem with this approach is that it imposes real attendance constraints because of lack of space; that said, I think we can accommodate more people than this year, and for next year I propose a more intensive outreach on our block to make sure people are aware.  In particular it has been hard to reach people living in some of the apartment/condo buildings, so I'm going to ask the residents of those buildings on our listserve if they can help out with that next year (for those of you living in apartments/condos, if your building neighbors want to be added to this listserve, just let me know!).  

CLOSE THE BLOCK, DON'T HAVE LIVE MUSIC:   Another option would be to close the block, but have a DJ or whatever instead of live music...so this would be kind of like Halloween but with fewer kids.  Let's think about this option, but honestly for me the live music is kind of the whole point.  Also, if we don't have live music, I'm not sure if we need the extra space provided by closing the street, because I don't think that many people would come to just hang out on our street.   I suppose we could provide free food like on Halloween, but that would just mean having people tied up with grilling and serving, whereas the whole point of this exercise was to allow people time to mingle with neighbors instead of serving up free grub.  

There are other options of dubious legality that would allow us to close the street and have live music, but I'm not sure if there is any point:   we wouldn't be able to promote the live music while complying with the block permit, and therefore we wouldn't really need the extra space provided by closing the street.  

Anyway, no need for any decisions right now, but I wanted to raise the various options for people to consider....no rush, but at some point it would be good to get feedback from you all.

Regards,

Tom