The crowd has grown larger every year at the annual Cooper-Young Festival. Organizers expect about 90,000 people to attend this year's event.
Though he has played in some of the city's top indie bands and has lived in the neighborhood for the past five years, Jeremy Scott has never played Midtown's Cooper-Young Festival until this year.
The crowd has grown larger every year at the annual Cooper-Young Festival. Organizers expect about 90,000 people to attend this year's event.
"Yeah, I'm a Cooper-Young Festival virgin," Scott says from his home in the neighborhood, on Philadelphia Street. "I've been to several, and the last two in particular I thought were really good. You could actually feel it getting a little bigger."
According to officials at the Cooper-Young Business Association, the group behind the festival for the past 21 years, Scott is right about the event's growth. Already the largest one-day festival in the city, last year it drew a record crowd estimated at more than 80,000. Weather permitting, officials this year are expecting as many as 90,000 throughout the day.
(With no gates and free admission, attendance is difficult to gauge. Walker says the CYBA figures are based on reports provided by the Memphis Police Department, which supplies a heavy presence of uniformed and plain-clothes officers at the festival.)
"In the morning, you've got your families with the children," CYBA director Tamara Walker says of the pattern she has noticed since stepping into her position in 2000. "Then once it gets later in the day, you've got the heavy-duty shoppers that are out about 1 p.m. And then the music kicks in, and you've got the people who are out to party about 3 p.m."
The funky, urban mix of arts and goods vendors, live music and food draws crowds to the Midtown neighborhood from across the county and Mid-South.
"To me, it's an opportunity for people to get out and enjoy the weather and explore this part of the city," said Bill Stemmer, a Collierville bank executive who has worked on the board of the festival for the past 21 years.
Running from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. Saturday (Sunday is the rain date), this year the festival is raising the bar once again with a record 370 vendors expected to participate, offering everything from original art work to vintage lunch boxes to T-shirts. The children's area has expanded with an art section developed in partnership with the Dixon Galley & Gardens and the Natural Learning School.
And there is music. Scott will be playing with two of the 17 bands slated to perform on the festival's three live music stages -- Jack Oblivian's Tennessee Tearjerkers and the local garage-rock supergroup Snake Eyes, featuring local music legend Jim Dickinson and members of the Tearjerkers, the Reigning Sound, and the 1,4,5's. Also scheduled to play are local blues-rock guitar phenom Eric Gales, rap group the Iron Mic Coalition, and the University of Memphis Jazz Band.
The festivities begin tonight, when the Memphis Literacy Council hosts a preview party and book sale at its headquarters at 901 S. Cooper from 4:30 to 7:30 p.m. Attendees will get first crack at more than 5,000 titles the council plans to offer at its popular book sale the day of the festival. Admission is $20 and includes food, wine and live music.
Also tonight, the Cooper-Young Festival Friday 4-Miler benefit race will begin at 7.
The first Cooper-Young Festival was a cozy neighborhood gathering in 1977 that drew about 500 people to the old Galloway United Methodist Church. In 1988, the fledgling Cooper-Young Business Association took over the event to promote the neighborhood as a business and leisure destination.
"Back in 2000 we had about 10 restaurants and I think there were seven retail shops," Walker recalls. "By the end of this year, there's going to be 20 restaurants, and there's about 45 retail shops."
For Stemmer, who grew up in Midtown and remembers riding the old trolley to the neighborhood with his grandmother, the event's impact reaches well beyond the pocketbooks of those selling bric-a-brac and beer. Stemmer first became involved in the festival when he spearheaded the old Commercial and Industrial Bank's community redevelopment efforts in the 1980s. Over the years, he says, the festival has helped raise funds that have been used for everything from community beautification efforts like the neighborhood's famous gazebo and railroad trellis, to less visible projects like paying to maintain the area's MPD mini-precinct, funding for the rehabilitation of neglected properties, and even new choir bleachers for the nearby Peabody School.
"The whole purpose of what we do is to give back into the community," he says.
The Cooper-Young Festival is 9 a.m.-7 p.m. Saturday at the intersection of Cooper and Young. Rain date is Sunday. Visit cooperyoungfestival.com
GoMemphis.com will have free downloads of music from festival bands John Paul Keith & the One Four Fives and Mouserocket and singer Grace Askew.
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Comments » 2
SCRAPPY writes:
On of the best people watching events in the city.
atlas#227075 writes:
It's a wonderful festival -- only thing missing is a fanciful parade like the Rites of Spring Festival in Seattle's Freemont Area. Maybe next year. It's a shame that Overton Square died. The two areas so close together would have made Memphis uniquely interesting. Hopefully C-Y will live forever.
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