Westheimer Street Festival

The Westheimer Street Festival was a community street fair held bi-annually in Houston, Texas, United States from approximately 1971 to 2004.

Community context

The festival (as well as its current successor, The Westheimer Block Party) takes its name from Westheimer Road, a thouroughfare in Houston which extends from approximately Bagby Street to the Westpark Tollway. At its near terminus, Westheimer Road passes for a number of blocks through a neighborhood known as Montrose (frequently referred to by residents as "The Troze"). Montrose has acquired a reputation as Houston's 'bohemian' enclave sometime between the end of World War II and The Sixties. By the time of the Street Festival's inception, the Montrose community served as the social and geographic hub of Houston's Gay and Lesbian Community, as well as the focal point of alternative art and music within the City of Houston at large--roles inseparable from the nature of the festival and the politics that came to surround it. Since that time, Montrose has experienced much the same fate as many other such communities across America, as newly-arrived and more culturally conservative residents seek to 'gentrify' it at the expense of its original unique identity. This gentrification and its consequences are probably the single most significant factor in the history of The Westheimer Street Festival.

Origin and early history

What became the Westheimer Street Festival was an offshoot of the Westheimer Colony Art Festival (known as the Bayou City Art Festival since 1997), which was established in 1971 as an arts/crafts festival. Both the original event and the later street fair occurred twice yearly over the course of a weekend in mid-April and a weekend in mid-October. Throughout the Seventies and Eighties, the 'Westheimer Art Festival' and the 'Westheimer Street Festival' continued to diverge. At one point, the art festival became a fenced-off, paid-admission event held in the parking lot of a strip center at the intersection of Westheimer Road and Montrose Boulevard. By this time, the Street Festival extended a dozen blocks along Westheimer and included well over a hundred art and craft vendors, food vendors and beer booths, as well as several outdoor stages showcasing local bands and musicians. Eventually, the Westheimer Colony Association decided to vacate Montrose altogether, first moving to downtown Houston and later Memorial Park--reorganizing in the process as the Bayou City Art Festival.

By the early Nineties, the Westheimer Street Festival had grown to an event that hosted as many as 300,000 attendees over a two day period, requiring street closure on Westheimer for about half a dozen blocks and resulting in traffic jams for several blocks further in both directions. The festival had originally been a fairly anachistic and organic event, with no central organization. Realizing that an event of this size required professional management, the City of Houston took steps to ensure that there would be no Westheimer Street Festival in the absence of professional management. The principal step was an agreement with the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission to prevent the issuance of so-called 'picnic permits' within the blocks covered by the festival. The TABC agreed that they would only issue a single alcohol permit to the individual or entity holding a street closure permit from the city. The city then restricted the conditions for obtaining the permit: it would not be issued unless the applicant had taken out an insurance policy covering the event and hired sufficient clean-up, sanitation, and security to guarantee minimal impact on surrounding residences. Under these circumstances, the Westheimer Street Festival came under the control of The Westheimer Street Festival Corporation, as led by John Florez.

Recent history and controversy

Frictions between the street fair and local residents were only somewhat abated by Mr. Florez's management. He had no prior experience as an event producer and a tendency to minimize the event budget wherever possible. A frequent complaint from neighborhood homeowners was a chronic lack of portable toilets (and the attendant consequences), with minimal attention to post-event clean-up running a close second. What had started out as a friendly neighborhood event held by and for residents of a relaxed and fairly bohemian community had become a spring break-like bachannal crowding thousands of drunken revelers into a neighborhood increasingly dominated by upscale condominiums and their increasingly conservatrive inhabitants.

By the late nineties, matters had reached the point where city council members Annise Parker and Chris Bell felt obliged to introduce a city ordinance requiring public hearings as a precondition for the issuance of a street closure permit. The ordinance became law on June 16, 1999. The last 'true' WestFest in Montrose was held on October 16 and 17, 1999. Shortly thereafter, Mr. Florez moved his event out of Montrose altogether, and for several years produced an event called "The Westheimer Street Festival in Exile" in Eleanor Tinsley Park several miles north of the original festival site. At this point, the last vestige of any similarity to the original community event was pretty well gone, even though the beer sponsorships and purveyors of cheap sunglasses and fried sausage remained. Other and better parties beckoned however, and by 2002 the "Westheimer Street Festival in Exile" had largely run out of steam.

In 2003, Mr. Florez attempted to return his event to Montrose by unofficially piggybacking it onto the Annual Gay Pride Parade. The principal effect of this attempt was to alienate many of Mr. Florez's remaining friends in the Houston Gay and Lesbian Community and further cement opposition of local community groups to the entire idea of a neighborhood street party. Florez relocated to San Antonio in late 2004; sadly, he was murdered on June 23, 2007 by two young men at his local video store Videos Mexicanos (source - KENS-TV Channel 5) who wanted to travel to Houston for the annual Gay Pride Weekend festivities.

Rebirth as The Westheimer Block Party

October 15, 2005 saw the return, of sorts, of the Westheimer Street Festival. Initially called 'WestFest Compressed' and now known as 'The Westheimer Block Party', this event is the brainchild of Free Press Houston publisher Omar Afra. While it bears extremely little resemblance to the oversized and unmanagable street festival of the 80's and 90's, it bears considerable similarity to the community street festival and art show as it existed in the 70's and early 80's. The event occurs without street closure on series of properties around the intersection of Westheimer road and Taft Street. Changes the Montrose community has experienced over the last twenty years rule out the possibility that the 'Block Party' will ever grow to match the original festival. It has experienced a slow and steady growth over the last two years, however, and seems to be finding friends and supporters within the community.

External links

* [http://www.earthwire.net/martin/published_work/westfest_then_now.pdf Westfest, Then and Now (2005)]
* [http://seributra_d.tripod.com/armageddon.html Death of an Icon - The Westheimer Street Festival (2000)]
* [http://houston.indymedia.org/news/2004/11/35001.php Westheimer Street Festival Dead @ 31 (November 15, 2004 - Houston Indymedia)]
* [http://groups.yahoo.com/group/westfestpuristsorganization WestFest Purists Organization]
* [http://houston.indymedia.org/news/2004/11/35173.php Bring Back WestFest to Westheimer (November 19, 2004 - Houston Indymedia)]
* [http://www.ctphotoartist.com/westfest/westfesthome.html WestFest: Portrait of a Street Festival]