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| - Once upon a time Mrs. Field made a batch of chocolate chip cookies that were so good, the neighbors started talking about how amazing they were. So she sold them. They caught the attention of a big corporation who bought Mrs. Field's name and recipe, and little by little cut out a little bit of this and a little bit of that, replacing prime delicious ingredients with artificial additives, to raise profits and make shareholders happy until what remained of Mrs. Field's 'cookies' was nothing more than a bag of fast food garbage. Bland, flavorless, and useless.
Once upon another time, there were two women, Donna and Jeannie who used to run a magnificent arts festival, with elegance, class, and a vision that was 20 years ahead of it's time. They created an arts festival that stood right up there with world class arts festivals like Seattle's 'Bumbershoot'. This festival was three weeks long, truly included something for EVERYONE, of all ages, and encompassed all of downtown and ALL day, attracting true artists of all mediums, and the intellectual people who wanted to experience it all.
There were stages in Mellon Square, Gateway Center, one at the entrance of Point State Park as well as the orchestra band shell that was inside Point State park (before some genius civil engineer decided it should be torn down), Market Square, and PPG. And these stages had entertainment every day, ALL day, ranging from local groups to international artists. A local bluegrass band would be followed by the US Army Jazz Orchestra.
Every empty storefront downtown was turned into an art installation of some type, whether a simple art show, or an actual multi-media interactive installation created by someone with...um...actual talent.
Artists were not crammed into one plaza, but little bits were in many of the other open plaza spaces downtown. And they were artists, not artsy craftsy. The PPG Wintergarden hosted a competition of art works by local college and high school students.
The entertainment that they brought in included names like Patti Lupone, Manhattan Transfer, Kate Clinton and Holly Near (which was a BOLD step in the early 80's - a lesbian show), Buckwheat and Queen Ida Zydeco, and many, many more top notch acts. Acts that appealed to teens, 20-somethings AND older folks. Then there were films at different venues downtown. There were political action performances. It was actually a heightened engagement...of the brain.
We didn't just go 'for a day' to the festival...we went MANY days to the festival just to be sure we'd seen it all.
The current management 'team' is much like the corporation that raided Mrs. Field's kitchen. And I won't eat those cookies.
First they got rid of the visionaries Donna and Jeannie, just KNOWING that their 'corporate' vision would bring such good things to an already vibrant event. They cut it down in time, size, class, and intellect. Instead of being resourceful and maintaining national and local integrity, the turned it into a flavorless bag of corporate cookies to make 'shareholders' happy. In this case, the 'shareholders' being those who really have no concept of art on any level, and gave all of us the grand opportunity to load up on beaded jewelry, little wooden piggies to hold our toilet paper, a nice floral watercolor for over the couch, and enough upcharged fast food to sate the gluttons.
Oh, they kept the popsicle stick craft tables for the kids...but in today's political climate, we REALLY don't want them to be THAT educated OR creative now, do we?
I can just hear them all sitting around their big board table with their trendy eyewear, speaking in those faux Hamptons accents that those ahhhhhhhts poseurs just love to put on, applauding themselves for being so brilliant.
But now, instead of a festival we HAD to go to several days to see all of...well...once four years ago was enough to last a decade.
I'm sure that there are a few older folks out there with memories of what I'm talking about.
Until Mrs. Field starts making her own cookies again...we are stuck with a crafts fair and junk food festival that, like most of the rest of Pittsburgh, is stuck 30 years BEHIND the times.
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