Slideshow: Mississippi Street Fair
Eats, arts, and musical mayhem
Posted by: Griffin Funk on Jul 11, 2011 at 12:00PM
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Local folkster Nick Jaina and band played the Courtyard stage while eager onlookers sipped New Belgium Brews under the coveted umbrellas.
View Slideshow »Mississippi Avenue was jam-packed with local artists, musicians, food carts, restaurants, and breweries for the 10th annual street fair. Last year’s fair drew over 30,000 people, and from the looks of it, this year’s event met (if not exceeded) that number as hordes of people hit the streets on July 9.
View Slideshow »B-Line, a sustainable delivery company, took to the overcrowded street, selling organic yerba matte tea from a delivery cart pulled by a bicycle and manned by an actual fairy princess.
View Slideshow »From Left: Cassandra Matthews, McKenzie Kinden, 6, and Juwuan Poke, 6 dawn painting shirts as they transform a boring car into a work of art, donations went to helping CHAP, Children’s Healing Art Project. The organization is striving to fund art programs for children in hospitals.
View Slideshow »A friendly apartment representative on Mississippi Avenue hands out balloons to passersby, filling the street with even more color—not that the Mississippi Street Fair needed any extra.
View Slideshow »As temperatures soared and brows began to boil, anything served with ice became a popular stop for fairgoers.
View Slideshow » Illustration:Space was limited at the overcrowded street fair, but people still found room to set up and jam out.
View Slideshow »Local taqueria Por Que No? was extremely busy due to its proximity to the dance stage and its serving of refreshing pomegranate margaritas.
View Slideshow »Singer Sara Hernandez of The Angry Orts gave an energetic, hip-thrust inducing performance on the main stage.
View Slideshow »A fairgoer contemplates the window paintings of one of the many art vendors. Every medium of art known to mankind seemed to be available for purchase along the avenue.
View Slideshow »Demonstrating their hula-hoop skills, two fairgoers feverishly work their hoops into a multi-colored vortex.
View Slideshow »The sweet and savory smells of kettle-corn, a street fair staple, wafted throughout the air as samples were generously doled out.
View Slideshow » Illustration:The infamous pink Voodoo Donut truck made an appearance serving up wacky donut creations to fair goers.
View Slideshow »The street fair drew an all-ages crowd with many children taking to the crows nest of a parent’s shoulders for a better view and a rest for tiny, Croc-shod feet.
View Slideshow »Over 250 vendors brought their finest funky wares to the Mississippi sidewalk between Fremont and Skidmore streets.
It was hot on Saturday. Melting gum on the sidewalk, shirtless-guy-who-probably-shouldn’t-be-going-shirtless kind of hot.
It was also the 10th annual Mississippi Street Fair. And if you happened to shuffle your way down Mississippi Avenue between Fremont and Skidmore streets, weaving through the train of baby strollers (or possibly pushing one yourself) and dodging the adorable-yet-slobbery pooches, well, Portland Monthly was right there with you.
Big Dawn Blackwood got things started around 10 AM and Mississippi Studios wrapped things up by hosting shows late into the night, culminating in a midnight concert from local heroes Dolorean. Between these two happenings, 36 regional bands, the likes of Dirty Mittens, agesandages and The Angry Orts (to name a few), strutted their stuff on six different stages.
Over 250 vendors brought unique merchandise for fairgoers to “ooo and ahh” over; everything from locally crafted jewelry to independently produced soap to deep fried mac n’ cheese balls to sketchy looking caramel apples were represented.
The gentrified North Portland neighborhood experienced an influx of thousands of Portlanders. If last weekend’s Waterfront Blues Festival was a sea of people, the Mississippi Street Fair was undoubtedly a slow-moving shoulder-to-shoulder river of humanity.
Photographer McKenna Johnson captured some of the street fair’s highlights, including the pescado tacos from Por Que No, the irreverent Pollock-esque painting of an automobile by children, and a toddler with a Batman mask painted on his face. It (finally) feels like summer out there—so, in the words of DJ Jazzy Jeff and The Fresh Prince’s “Summertime”, “sit back and unwind,” and enjoy the slideshow!
Were you there? Let us know what you liked.
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