“That doesn’t mean it will end,” says Hessler Street Fair director Packy Malley in an email. “It has gone on hiatus before. There are several factors involved in this decision. Some of them are the condition of the street, the lack of parking, the skyrocketing costs, the Hessler Neighborhood Association is down to one member, Hessler Road is full of undergraduates now and when school is out no one is on the street.”
Malley stays he’s trying to stay positive about the festival’s future, but at that point, he admits it’s inevitable it’ll have to take a break.
Original Post 3/25/2019: While it’s not summer (or even feeling quite like spring) yet, the dates for the annual Hessler Street Fair have been announced for the weekend of June 1. And this year, the free community event is celebrating 50 years in action.
Conceived in 1969 as a block party (and later abandoned amid the not-so-hip 1980s), the Harmony Park’s Hessler Street Fair has evolved into one of the biggest and most involved parties the city has to offer.
The eastside celebration is one of the first big events of the season, and gets packed in quickly. Festival music, dancing and shopping goes from 11 a.m. to dusk Saturday and Sunday. Note that finding nearby (free) parking is nearly impossible, so, as always, remember that public transportation is a wonderful option.
Find out more about the event right here. Check out everything we saw at last year’s edition right here.
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This article appears in Mar 21-24, 2019.
I was wondering how long it would go on. I was thinking the younger people would not be interested in continuing it but didn’t know there were so few year-round residents on the street. That’s sad.
It wasn’t that long ago there were a lot of year-round residents on the street. Some appeared to be the original hippies from the Seventies. But time marches on…people get old and die…or at least move away, perhaps into “senior housing”…hell, most of the originals gave to be close to seventy now, if not more. Nobody lives forever. Fifty years, not counting the earlier hiatus, is a helluva long run.
Also, changing the date to June means that even the undergrads on Hessler have already left for the summer, unless they’re going to summer school. When it was still in May, the kids moving out of the nearby dorms took up a lot of spaces and blocked streets with their parents’ vehicles, so June semed like a good idea. But it isn’t so much the lack of students in June, it’s the relentless march of time, and its inevitable effect on the older residents.
There’s a saying about baseball: “The crowd and the players are the same age always, but the man in the crowd is older every season.” Guess that applies to street fairs, too. The Hessler Street Fair was always one of Cleveland’s best, and a kickoff to summer. There was nothing else quite like this weekend-long way-back machine. What a goddam shame. [sniff]
I haven’t yet been to the Hessler Street Fair partly because I assumed it would be packed with undergraduates and people who like all of those Asian Chipotles they have at university circle. I guess I had that wrong.
Very diverse crowd, from all over the Cleveland area. All ages, all races, lots of fun and good music.
You missed a lot. Never assume…it makes an ass out of u and me…but mostly u.