Sunday, May 22, 2011

Spring Arts Goggle

Fort Worth's Near Southside has a twice-yearly art fest called Arts Goggle. I'm a little delinquent in getting up a post about it since it happened over a week ago, but I decided to post it anyway.

According to the Near Southside description, "Arts Goggle is a grassroots gallery crawl held twice a year since 2004. Around 60 Near Southside businesses are transformed into art galleries for a Saturday evening each spring and fall, hosting artists and musicians from the neighborhood and throughout the region."

The Near Southside is something like a neighborhood association, and then some. Anyway, Arts Goggle is one of the bigger events they put on. Anyway, I headed over to Trinity Bicycles on South Main. Note Nelson, the shop dog, in the lower center of the picture.



The artist they hosted was Adam Werner, the painter who did the mural on the wall, along with his wife, Robbie, who has just started Stir Crazy Baked Goods.



I failed to take any pictures of them, but during the Arts Goggle last fall, Trinity did a Complete Streets demo, including painting a bike lane with a door zone to keep cyclists away from car doors. Shortly before the Spring Arts Goggle, the city painted the lanes for real from Vickery to Magnolia, marking a big improvement for cyclists.

I visited there for a while, and checked out some of the other artists, then rode over to Avoca Coffee, a new coffee shop over on Magnolia.



Wiener Man was in Avoca's parking lot, so I got me a wiener.



While I was waiting, I watched the hoop dancers.





The main event at Avoca was watching Fish Fry Bingo play.



I wasn't the only one who was getting into it.





Sorry I didn't take more pictures of the art. It was as much about the party as it was the art. Even as it got late there were still lots of people out.



Afterwards, a bunch of us went for a drink over at the T&P Tavern. On the way over, I saw one other band still playing at an old used car lot.



The Arts Goggle is fun. It's a lot less formal than the Main Street Art Fest downtown.

2 comments:

Big Oak said...

It looks like a blast. Ordinary businesses turned into gathering places for fun and fellowship is a brilliant idea!

Apertome said...

What a neat idea! I would definitely attend something like this.