Bah. Humbug.
I’m going to warn you before I start that this entry contains crankiness. I’m going to try not to let it affect my review of the Festival itself too badly, but I have to tell you, it’s hard not to, considering how I was treated by the people running it. And I’m good at cranky.
First of all, there are very few pictures here for a simple reason: they wouldn’t let me take any. This is why:
Tags: Art · Events · Live Music
A few weeks back, on April 27, I had the privilege of attending the Denton Arts and Jazz Festival — one of about 200,000 people to do so this year. It was free, after all, even if they wouldn’t let you carry any coolers inside (didn’t want to stifle the beer concessions, y’know). The festival was a wide, sprawling event that took up the Denton Civic Center area and Quakertown Park in downtown Denton. The park itself is kind of a surprise — it’s a big, open space that seems out of place in the middle of a town as densely populated as Denton is. A historical plaque near the entrance of the park, however, tells the story. Apparently, back at the turn of the 20th century, Quakertown was a thriving African-American community. In 1922, Denton’s city fathers (who were all white, of course), decided they needed Quakertown’s 27-acre site for a park, so they held a bond election to raise the money for development, passed it, and booted the people of Quakertown out of their homes despite their opposition to the idea. Nothing unusual — it only happened a thousand times back in the old days.
Tags: General