Family Fun / Arts & Leisure

POP/CULTURE: Stay the same or mix it up?

By David Burke | Monday, August 04, 2008 | () comments

Every year around these weeks, I take trips down to the Wells Fargo Street Fest in downtown Davenport and the Mississippi Valley Fair and look around to survey the landscape.

Then I ask myself a question: “What’s new?”

My usual reply: “Not much.”

That can be both a good thing and a bad thing.

On the whole, everything is pretty much in the same spot from year to year. The street fest may have shifted a couple of blocks, but the cast of characters is still the same. Granted, the fair has less of an option than the street fest since it’s tough to move entire buildings from one spot to another.

But with either one, you know the same craft and food vendors will be right about where they were the year before.

This used to really frustrate me. I lived in Decatur, Ill., for 8 1/2 years and reported on an annual 22-block-long street festival (the newest edition of the Decatur Celebration is this weekend), and by the fifth or sixth year, I had such disdain for it that I didn’t go unless I absolutely had to.

Why? I knew where every food stand, every vendor and every stage was located. Only the performing acts on the stages changed. Give me a pencil and paper and I probably could have mapped everything out at the time.

But as time has gone by — heck, maybe it’s because I’m getting older — I’m finding the familiarity a bit comforting. It’s good to know where I can find the chicken-on-a-stick (almost my only fair/festival weakness around here) on the street or the grounds.

A lot has happened around here in the past year — just think of what’s different since the fair shut down 52 weeks ago — and maybe there’s some solace in having something remain the same.

The District of Rock Island has several summer festivals each year, and it seems, for better or worse, there are always big changes in its presentations from one version to the next. I can’t climb inside the heads of The District personnel to know whether those changes are out of necessity or a constant need for improvement, but it is different from one year to the next.

Maybe there’s a happy medium that could be struck. Change things up a little bit, but keep some stalwarts the way they are. Change is inevitable, but keeping things at the status quo isn’t always the best thing either.

What’s your opinion on these annual festivals? Are we better off with the tried-and-true or mixing it up a little bit?