Sitting outside of Alto Cinco, William Knodel — clad in a Van Halen T-shirt and a pair of fairy wings — and Grace and Michael Flusche had much to reminisce about during this year’s Westcott Street Cultural Fair. The trio helped start the fair nearly 30 years ago.

“That first day, that first Sunday the weather was like this, the street was closed for the first time in years and people came out and was just like the 1960s,” Flusche said.

“With all the music, it was like ‘Woodstock lives’,” Knodel added.

This year, several thousand attendees lined the streets of Westcott on the warm Sunday afternoon to take in the eclectic sights and sounds the neighborhood offered.

Forty-three separate performers played on Westcott’s six stages and its skinny side streets over the course of six hours. Early in the fair, Morris dancers showcased a pagan English folk dance, wearing outfits adorned with streamers and bells.

A couple of hours later in the same space, Syracuse Capoeira Club dazzled audiences with its athletic, mock-fighting style of dance born in Brazil. Several yards away, local band The Funky Blu Roots played to an energetic, dancing crowd at the WAER stage in front of Dorian’s Gourmet Pizza and Deli.

“It’s bigger but it has the same spirit,” said Susan Galbraith, who directs the Basset Street Hounds and Thornden Morris dancing team. She said she has attended every Westcott fair since the first event.

Diversity echoed as a theme throughout the day for those newly acquainted with the fair.

“It’s very cultural with a lot of the world dance and very diverse,” said Kanat Bolazar, a member of the Bread and Roses Collective. He said he will often run into people he hasn’t seen for years at the fair.

Grace, Knodel and fellow community member Susan Nathan first began discussions of a community pride event in the summer of 1991 in Nathan’s Tales Twice Told Bookstore, where the Westcott Florist now stands.

“A few of us that came up with the idea for a street fair to showcase what we thought was great about our neighborhood and its diversity … it was this synchronicity that’s always been in this neighborhood,” Knodel said.

Knodel credits the continued work of community leaders to the strength and character of both the neighborhood and the festival.

“So many of the people that continue to live here and be involved … these organizations (have) always existed and always have been friendly,” Knodel said. “The fact that it keeps going seems to be a magic in it of itself.”

The biggest difference in the past 27 years is the size of the event and the amount of money involved, Grace, Michael and Knodel said. At the start, the event was entirely volunteer based, Michael said. But as the fair grew, so did the number of contributors.

“There was time way back when … some of us old codgers would climb up and string beads across the street were afraid we’d break our hip,” Knodel said. “But now there’s corporate money that helps sustain it.”

In addition to performances, more than 70 stalls crammed along Westcott Street, with vendors ranging from clothing and homemade jewelry to Christian organizations and community activist groups spreading their respective messages.

“You come to this place and you see every activist on the planet you haven’t seen and it’s a celebration and a party,” Knodel said.

Published on September 24, 2018 at 1:22 am