The future looks uncertain for Oakland’s First Fridays, the lively arts and community festival that draws about 30,000 to Telegraph Avenue every month. While the event is best known for its support of local artists, it’s also important for up-and-coming food vendors — especially people of color.
First Fridays, which has been on pause since the pandemic began, is facing two major roadblocks: new police fees and new protected bike lanes.
The Oakland Police Department is now charging the festival $24,000 to send 45 officers to each event, as first reported by KQED. Shari Godinez, executive director of the Koreatown Northgate Community Benefit District, said she’s never had to pay police fees in her nonprofit’s seven years of running First Fridays — and she can’t afford it. The Oakland Police Department didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Meanwhile, the city placed plastic barriers along Telegraph Avenue’s bike lanes during the pandemic. These new barriers cut the festival’s footprint in half, Godinez said. The Oakland City Council is voting Tuesday whether to install permanent barriers along the bike lanes. The nonprofit has been fighting the new bike lanes not just for the sake of First Fridays but because of safety concerns. A Change.org petition argues that it can be difficult for drivers to see bike lane traffic past parked cars. Bike advocacy group Bike East Bay disagrees,arguing these protected bike lanes are the safest option.
“We’re already running at a loss for this festival,” Godinez said. “This could make it so this festival can’t continue to happen.”
Food vendors who depended on First Fridays say they’re heartbroken the festival couldn’t come back as hoped this July — and they’re worried about future editions.
“That’s where I started my business. That’s where I learned to be a food vendor,” said Mierra Marah, who runs Afro-Caribbean caterer Mi Granny’s Kitchen and sold at First Fridays for five years. “With COVID, it’s very hard for me to make a living because that was the moneymaker for me.”
For vendors who typically bounce around among festivals, First Fridays was an unusually consistent gig. “The sales were very good. It was an event where I could go and know it’d be amazing,” said Kemi Tijaniqudus, whose West African stand Jollof Kitchen stood at First Fridays for three years.
The festival started organically in 2006, with neighborhood galleries advertising a monthly art walk and crowds of people taking over the streets. It has turned into one of Oakland’s most prominent cultural events, with the business district nonprofit taking it over seven years ago.
Organizers intentionally sought out a diverse mix of food vendors and made fees as low as possible in the community spirit, Godinez said. Depending on the month, 30 to 50 food vendors would work the festival. According to a 2017 survey, 81% of First Fridays vendors identified as people of color.
Some vendors who got their start at First Fridays went on to open full-on restaurants, such as Javi’s Cooking, which operates an Argentinian empanada shop in West Oakland, and Hotbird, which draws lines to San Francisco’s Twitter building for spicy chicken sandwiches.
If the City Council votes to make the barriers permanent Tuesday, Godinez said, her nonprofit will apply to make First Fridays extend much further down Telegraph in an attempt to cover the costs of the street closure and staffing.
As for the police fees, Godinez said she’s meeting with city officials in the hope of figuring out a solution — the nonprofit already pays for private security. In the past, safety issues typically arose hours after the First Fridays festival shut down but crowds continued to mill around, such as a shooting that injured six people in 2018.
“I feel like First Fridays got blamed for a lot of stuff happening in Oakland,” Marah said. “It’s very disappointing to me and other vendors who really loved doing that event.”
Janelle Bitker is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: janelle.bitker@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @janellebitker