Monday's Council meeting will consider supporting the 'Wicked Weekend' - a Halloween festival that comes to Taylor Square, Darlinghurst on the October 28 weekend. The idea of the Darlinghurst Business Partnership is to market Halloween and bring visitors to the area, providing a vibrant community focal point in Taylor Square North and featuring performances, costume competitions, street decorations, shop front displays, late night shopping and on street fashion parades. The night is modeled on the extremely successful programs run in major US cities such as New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles. This would be the inaugural event for the City of Sydney.Council is asked to donate $10,000 in cash plus $5,000 by way of a fee waiver for banner pole hire and cleansing services. After the huge and ongoing disruption to businesses along Oxford Street during the $20 million upgrade it would seem a very small investment to keep the local businesses afloat. There will be also considerable Halloween-themed activity in the nightclubs and bars in Oxford Street. The event runs simultaneously with the Sydney Food and Wine Fair and it is anticipated that there could be significant cross over from the Hyde Park event. The proposal has my full support and the Darlinghurst Business Partnership is to be congratulated for the initiative.
7 comments:
Parades like this that work in US cities have sprung up organically as a result of the voluntary actions of individuals.
The flaw in this proposal is thinking that government can, by administrative fiat, create a "vibrant street culture".
Oxford Street is a mess. If all of the Oxford Street "festivals" are anything to go by, this Halloween function will be more of the same - tired and drugged out drag queens, tatty gay clothing and sex shops opening late, some stalls selling cholesterol-laden dim sums, a tatty stage on which the COS Mayor can try to promote her tired old message ("villages, villages, villages" - Potemkin more like it), bad art shows, and some really sad leather men who should stay in Surry Hills, all drinking nasty wine from plastic cups in that abomination that poses as a plaza - Taylor Square (famous around the world for concrete pods with boas and postcards of non-entities in them, and a very decrepit fountain - alleged to have costs ratepayers up to $6million total - but ecouncillor might be able to enlighten us on the total costs of that boondoggle).
Mardi Gras (when it worked) did not arise from government action, no enduring tradition does - Oakeshott and Burke were on to something here.
So where is Clr Mallard's western free marekt approach now. If this festival can't stand on its own two feet economicaly, why are we subsidising it?
Jake
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