Covid Chronicles. Chapter 32: Summer Festival Cancellations

 

Read chapter 31 here

No Bastille Day party this year

Photo by Retiring Guy

Sunday, May 3, 2020

Madison’s local newspaper, the Wisconsin State Journal, is taking a piecemeal approach to announcing the cancellation of local activities, including the various weekend festivals that communities host throughout the summer. The most recent cancellation is Festa Italia, sponsored by the Madison-based Italian Workman’s Club. It takes place annually during the last weekend in May in Fitchburg, a suburb immediately south of Madison. (Why Fitchburg? I have no idea.) JoAnna and I attended this event just once, close to 10 years ago, I’d guess. After walking the grounds for an hour and sampling some of the food offered by vendors, not all of it Italian — I think Subway had a booth, if I recall — we headed back to the car. There wasn’t much going on. For us, it was a one-and-done/never-again kind of event. 

To be honest, we’ve never been much for attending local festivals. Moreover, we probably wouldn’t attend Middleton’s Good Neighbor Fest every year if it weren’t one of our Kiwanis Club's biggest fundraisers. 

Last week the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel published a comprehensive list of the status of festival, concerts, and other cultural events through the end of the summer. The majority of those taking place in June and July have either been cancelled or rescheduled for the fall — the former action being the more common outcome. Milwaukee dubs itself ‘the City of Festivals” and has a chockablock calendar to back up this claim, particularly when it comes to ethnic festivals: Irish, Italian, German, French (Bastille Day), Polish, Greek, and Mexican, to name the most popular. For the sponsors, it’s not just a time for food, drink, merriment, and celebration, but a critical fundraising opportunity to support the projects they support. There is no Plan B. GoFundMe, for example, would recover just a small portion of the monetary loss, and many local businesses are now in no position to ramp up their support. Summerfest, Milwaukee’s annual live-music extravaganza at Henry Maier Park on Lake Michigan just south of downtown (as shown in this photo from the ‘Visit Milwaukee’ website), sprawls over a 11-day span in late June and early July and attracts, on average, more than 800,000 people. About a month ago, organizers postponed this mammoth event to September. Which, I suspect, is not likely to improve the odds of Summerfest taking place at all this year. From what I’ve read, most artists have canceled or postponed their concert tours. Last year, Summerfest featured more than 800 acts appearing on 11 stages. I think organizers would be fortunate to book a small fraction of that number for its September dates.  

New York Times, 4/23/2020

The movie industry is going through a similar scheduling dilemma. As a recent New York Times article noted, the major studios have pushed back the openings of their major May and June releases. At this point, the only ‘sure things’ are Christopher Nolan’s Tenet on July 17th and Disney’s “Mulan” the following weekend. And In this age of wide releases, movies opening on more than 4,000 screen to maximize box office receipts, studio heads are not about to resume business when the majority of screens remain dark. In other words, theater owners are free to open their multiplexes in certain areas of the country, but they’ll have no new product. So what are their options? They can bring back the movies that were playing just before public-gathering restrictions went into place, as if theater were frozen in place for the past 6 weeks. Or they can show classic films — crowd-pleasing series like Star Wars, Harry Potter, and James Bond — movies that most people can safely stream at home. 

Source:  Box Office Mojo

On the other hand, there’s the ‘get-me-out-of-this-place’ factor, as a NYT reporter phrased it. 

“The supply of great shows is bigger than it’s ever been, but it’s not infinite,” he said. “I think people are beginning to exhaust the shows they are really dying to watch. After finishing the fourth season of ‘Call the Midwife,’ they might be wondering what it’s like to see a squirrel run up a tree.”

Photo credit;  Wikipedia

 

It’s the season of cancellations big and small. A few days ago, the Experimental Aircraft Association announced its annual Fly-in Convention in Oshkosh will not take place. (The photo here is from the EAA website.) This late-July, weeklong event attracts more than 600,000 visitors from all over the world and provides a major boost to the Fox Valley economy. Motels within a 50-mile radius are booked to capacity. Spending by visitors adds an appreciable boost to sales and room taxes, the loss of which this year which will result in reduced revenues for municipalities and counties. 

As for small impacts, JoAnna and I confirmed yesterday, during one of our daily walks, that our Bastille Day party will not take place this year. Not on its designated second Saturday in July or at any time later in the year. It was to be the final performance of a 26-year run. What a disappointing ending. 

Read chapter 33 here