Sundown in the City crowd on 6/11/09
The argument over whether Sundown in the City is good for downtown Knoxville’s Market Square is about to ruin a party I’m planning – and I’m not happy about it.
The problem: I have friends on both sides of the fight – and most have very strong opinions about this subject. Harsh words and insults have passed between the groups. “Party” is not the word that immediately comes to mind when I think of getting them all together in one place.
Here’s the issue. Sundown, of course, is a series of free rock concerts held every Thursday night on Market Square. Wildly popular, they have been known to attract 10,000 fans. And that’s the problem. While most of the attendees are responsible and just there to have a good time, some patrons (mostly underaged) don’t seem to know how to behave.
As someone who both lives and works downtown, here are a few of the things I’ve witnessed:
- Teenaged girl vomiting in an alley off Gay Street as her friends stood around;
- Groups of kids drinking and smoking in a downtown parking garage when I went there to get my car — and they weren’t too happy to see me;
- Folks at Salon Visage on Market Square closing early on Thursday to avoid the smoke wafting into their business from a vendor’s grill positioned right outside their door and staffed by some of the well-known downtown homeless population;
- The owner of Two Centre Square calling police to keep a group of teens from damaging the sculpture of the “rowboat man” as they tried to steal the paddle;
- Young unsupervised teens hanging around Krutch Park in an apparently impaired state.
On the other hand, it’s fun! The music last night was good (if too loud) and the crowd was orderly. The patios of the bars and cafes on Market Square were packed – and they charge a premium for those seats on Sundown nights.
Here are some of the thoughts about changes to Sundown that are going around:
- Move it to World’s Fair Park. It has outgrown Market Square as a venue. It was a boost to the Square when it began years ago, but now it is a headache to many of the businesses there. Folks who want to enjoy what Market Square has become actually avoid the area when the concerts are scheduled. Businesses have to close to avoid shoplifters and non-patrons who use and destroy their bathrooms. Market Square residents are inconvenienced. (For instance, I attended a party last night at one of the lofts on Market Square. Because almost everyone brought wine, they had to skulk in through a back alley to avoid the gauntlet of security folks keeping alcohol from entering the Square. Don’t want to cut into on-site beer sales, you know!) On the flip side, the World’s Fair Park is a more expensive location to hold the concerts, which organizers don’t like.
- Move the concerts around. Share the wealth. Close some roads and put some of the shows in the Old City at the corner of Central and Jackson, benefiting the clubs and restaurants in that area. The downside: cost and hassle. It’s easier to have them in the same place each week.
- Encourage organizers to be more selective about the performers. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that some bands attract a rowdier crowd than others.
- Turn down the volume! (That’s my suggestion. I mean, Jeez!)
- Increase police presence in the parking garages and areas surrounding Market Square.
None of these ideas is new. My friend Andie Ray, the host of last night’s party, says they’ve been discussed for years to no avail.
Meanwhile my friend Laurens Tullock says the kids who are puking on Gay Street today will be the ones who will purchase downtown condos in five years. It’s good for them to feel comfortable downtown.
I predict the discussion will rage on. And, in the meantime, I’ve figured out the solution to my party dilemma. The last Sundown concert for this year is June 25. After that, surely the “hot topic” will become something else downtown. I’ll just schedule my party a few weeks after that!
Another discussion of this subject: http://www.wigsphere.com/
Ah, yes. Sundown. I figured something like this would happen sooner or later. Growing up in Morristown, I didn’t even know about it until I went to college (at UGA) and then came back last summer. All my friends who went to UT made it a weekly thing.
I think all of your ideas about moving it around are good ones. I agree with you wholeheartedly and think the music is way too loud for the confines of Market Square. It’s deafening.
They definitely shouldn’t cancel it because it’s a great way to boost local commerce in the midst of this economy. Maybe parents should be honest with themselves and figure out what their kids are doing when they’re underage and say they’re going to Sundown. I mean…duh.
I’m living in Atlanta now, but it’ll be interesting to see how this debate ends. Both sides have a good argument, so I hope they can reach a compromise.
Great post, Cynthia.
I was in Knoxville last June for a big one and was excited to see so many vibrant people really happy to be there for the fun. I always wanted more to do in my hometown. Sure there are incidences of vandalism, partying too much, inconveniences for locals. I live in a place where every weekend in the summer thousands of cars line up for their turn in a parking spot at the beach. We adjust. Salons can schedule appts. around it, security guards already in place can police the area diligently, and maybe a few more cops in the surrounding areas. But as long as there’s been alcohol, there’s been people abusing it.
I liked your ideas, all decent solutions. Might be fun to splinter it into two venues concurrently, maybe some elegant jazz on the mall, rock n’ roll at the World’s Fair park?
Just don’t let them cancel the fun of coming together to have a good time! Canceling the events would be such a blow to the city’s ego.
Janet Wise
Marina del Rey, CA
We “ran” in the I-40 Dash yesterday evening and were going to walk to dinner afterwards. Then our group realized what day it was. So we skipped going to La Costa last night because of SDIC and opted for Sunspot instead. Had a awesome dinner!
So, as you can see, I’m not against street parties because I had just been with 2000 people on the new interstate! But not during dinner, thanks.
Size matters here. The music for a large crowd has to be loud to be heard over the talk. When the bodies are in the thousands? This just begs for a venue that allows for that to happen well. Market Square is not meant to be Neyland Stadium.
What they should do is play the concerts live over college radio and feed it to larger venues in the WORLDS FAIR PARK. Limit the stage and the live audience to eight hundred folks… and provide tickets only admission. The distribution of free tickets can be done online, or at AC, on request only basis.
Limiting the crowds on MS is only fair and keeps the event from being insane. They can video the live performance and show it on screens in the larger remote space. This spreads the crowd and also allows for some semblance of normalcy to the goings and comings of Market Square life.
Good audio and video and food and beverage booths would make it a fine time. Sponsors would need to pay for expenses, but all in all, it would be a good compromise to have good music without sacrificing the quality of the experience for those who want to be there and those who want to do something in the area near it.
It was great having you & Alan join us last night, thanks for the tasty appetizers!
One small clarification of my point of view, is that Sundown is such a professionally run event, that in most people’s minds the negatives are outweighed by the positves, i.e. revenue for bars and restaurants.
The same can’t be said for some other events, which have high levels of disruption with very poor attendence. We had two-hundred & fifty-something event days last year!
More and more people realize that Market Square is the event in and of itself. Folks come from all over to enjoy sitting outside, dining, wining and people watching. You never know what or who you will see! Elvis Costello-check! A guy walking a dog, with a cat riding on it’s back, with a mouse riding on the cat’s back-check! Street buskers playing fiddles, accordions & vibraphones-check!
Jugglers and unicyclists and the list goes on and on.
Recently, due to the City reaching out for input, special events policies for Market Square have been adjusted accordingly, though we haven’t seen the full benefits yet due to events that were already booked prior to the policy changes.
I think you are onto the emerging opinion that the public most enjoys Market Square as Market Square.
Thanks for the clarification. Good points all. Worth skulking thru alley to get to your fabulous loft!
at times i just can’t believe i live in this town.
The problem with Sundown – the teenagers! I went a few weeks ago and felt like it was a braces and acne festival! I am sounding old, but do the parents just drop them off in the Square and let them run wild? I hate to say it, but there needs to be an age limit. If you’re not of drinking age, then you don’t get in without parental supervision.
I think Sundown itself is a good, well-run event. The problem is the venue, not the concerts. The question is one of aesthetics. The choices in who we attract to come downtown today determines the kind of neighborhood we will have in 5 years. Market Square is not “Downtown World” where people lock the gates and go home to the suburbs at night. 2,000 people live here. It’s their home.
The fact that a few thousand other people want to use someone else’s neighborhood to party loud and get drunk every week for months on end should not be allowed to determine downtown’s future. City Police have spent a huge sum of money on a North Korean prison camp-style portable watchtower for the SDIC crowd. For heaven’s sake, doesn’t anyone wonder why we are inviting people downtown who need to be watched that way?? What does this say to visitors when the damn thing is left downtown for all to see for a week or two at a time, and for Farmers Market and Dogwood Arts Festival? Look at how cool we are world!
The most attractive urban areas to visitors are those where large numbers of people live and shop – Greenwich Village in Manhattan is a good example. Villages in France & Italy. The most attractive properties to live in should be those surrounding parks and public squares, but several younger people have already left Market Square because of the noise.
The level and frequency of noise from SDIC reduces the demand for residential properties nearby to younger people who are more willing to tolerate the noise and disruption while they are young and single. It discourages the expansion of demand to young families and older residents, and this in turn reduces property values and city property tax receipts, and discourages new retail businesses.
When all the retail businesses on the Square close early or don’t stay open late to take advantage of the crowd, it’s a bad sign. When vandalism is in the thousands of dollars per week and the parking garages are full of drunk teenagers it’s not good. When we drive spending away from nice restaurants and retail, and toward bars, we are headed in the direction of Beale Street, not Park Avenue.
One unsettling issue about Sundown, Cynthia, is the number of men in their 30’s who appear to be hassling the teen-age girls. I was really uncomfortable about two of three incidents I saw. I couldn’t figure out if the men were selling drugs to the girls, buying the girls or preparing to get rough. They were definitely too old to be moving on the 14 or 15 year old girls.
That probably wouldn’t change in any location but I think I agree with Jennifer Burke about an age limit.
Although I don’t specifically remember the “puking” part of the quote attributed to me, I am an advocate for keeping Sundown on Market Square. There was a Sundown in the City on Market Square in a previous incarnation in the 1980’s, started by City People while I was President and continued by the Downtown Organization when it was formed. It became a success and was promptly moved by the Downtown Organization to a “concert lawn” at the Civic Colisem, surrounded by easy, accessible parking. It died a quick death within 2 years.
Sundown is a community building event more than it is a concert. It is a big reason that folks from the entire region see Downtown as their neighborhood now. It is a victim of being too successful. My fear is a move to World’s Fair Park would quickly turn it into a destination concert event that would have an entirely different character and would lose its community building function. There is a purpose for outdoor concert events such as the Hot Summer Nights Concert Series at World’s Fair Park. But the community building purpose of Sundown is different and has been a key to the current vitality of Downtown.
My solution is stricter underage consumption enforcement, increased security, and up and coming bands that are not known yet rather than name acts. But continue the regularity and the place for Sundown. Use World’s Fair Park for name acts for an entirely different series of charged concerts (e.g. Hot Summer Nights).
And yes, every teenager and college student and young adult who now sees Downtown as a cool place that is their neighborhood too as a result of experiencing Sundown is a future investor in keeping Downtown vibrant for years to come.
As a relative newcomer to the Blue Streak, I’m too late to save Cynthia’s party from ruin and Sundown 2009 has already ended, but I would like to share some information that might be interesting to those following this discussion.
• We work hard to have a strong line of communication with those directly impacted by Sundown. Every year – after Sundown ends and before planning for the next season begins – AC Entertainment reaches out to Market Square merchants, property owners, and dwellers – along with City officials and others – to discuss Sundown. Our initial question is always the same: Do you want Sundown to continue? The answer – while not without some nuance – has always been overwhelmingly positive (I’m tempted to say 100% but perhaps not…)
• In addition to the possibility of letting Sundown fade away, we have specifically proposed the World’s Fair Park as an option. I’m not certain that it would work – it would be more expensive but frankly much easier in many ways…whether the location works for an event of this nature would have to be seen – but we have always been strongly dissuaded, both both Market Square merchants and City officials from pursuing that option. We continue to discuss it internally at AC however.
• When Bill Lyons organized the forum to discuss events policy with Market Square and downtown shareholders, Sundown was actually held up as a example of how to do things well.
• We are proud of the team that comes together to make Sundown a reality – from the sponsors, Mickey Mallonee and her team at the City, all of the police officers who work so closely with us, and all of the staff. They work hard. It’s a very challenging event to stage and there are a lot of factors to consider.
• Maintaining control over alcohol sales is one of our biggest challenges. We have developed innovative strategies to work with Market Square businesses so that they can participate in sales while staying within beer permit guidelines and insurance requirements. There is a reason that people can’t bring bottles of alcohol into the Square during the event…even if you’re allegedly on the way to some place else.
• Instances of underage drinking at Sundown are highly exaggerated. According to the police, the instances that do occur are seldom due to alcohol being purchased at the event for underage kids. Most common is that kids are bringing alcohol from home and consuming it beforehand or in the parking garages (this happens at high school football games, proms, and other events as well). At the event, our wristband system is very helpful in enabling the police and security teams to watch for potential violations and keep things under control.
• When I attend Sundown, I spend most of my time walking through the crowd, seeing who’s there, and watching how people are behaving. I’ve become especially sensitive to things with all of the chatter out there about masses of drunken stoned teenagers and old guys plying teenage girls with alcohol. Based on my observations, this is a very unfair characterization of the event. I do see a lot of teenagers being teenagers (and, yes, I understand that this can scare some folks to death!) and a lot of people of all ages having a really good time. I find the energy downtown on these evenings to be pretty exciting and invigorating, personally.
• As for the booking policy, I find the variety to be pretty strong. In fact, what’s frustrating to me is that the crowds are comparatively light to see acts like the fabulous Latin dance band, Grupo Fantasma and the Texas swing of the Belleville Outfit. Any Bonnie Raitt fan would love the powerful bluesy voice of Grace Potter and her soulful band. We had hip hop, country, folk, blues, reggae, funky jazz, and more.
We’re continually looking for ways to tweak and improve Sundown. There’s an undeniable truth that it’s success has become one of our biggest challenges. We’re certainly open to thoughtful discussions on how to make things better.
And it’s certainly reasonable to consider that perhaps Sundown has run its course or needs to be moved or whatever…although it’s interesting to think this way in light of it’s overwhelming popularity, at least for some (one of my favorite sayings about Sundown: “No one goes anymore because it’s too crowded.”) It’s not for everyone, to be sure, but that shouldn’t be translated into “it’s not for anyone.”
At any rate, I must say that I do not feel that this is completely my decision to make. We’ve got our own issues to consider in whether to continue with Sundown (the chief one being simply the time and effort vs steadily diminishing financial returns…which is another discussion entirely). But, for me, this is ultimately a community decision because Sundown is a community event…and it’s about much more than what I or any other individual wants or thinks.
At any rate, I hope everyone survived Cynthia’s party with no more than a flesh wound or two.
Ashley, is there some reason it has to be so loud to be fun? Didn’t start out like that. Everyone I’ve asked (in the middle-aged fogey demographic) thinks it’s way too loud. Some go anyway, some stay away. Sundown would attract a broader mix if it wasn’t self-selected for people who don’t mind risking hearing damage and the sound level could explain why some of the more sophisticated shows don’t attract a better audience.
What about the Chatanooga setup where distributed speakers (with time delay so the sound doesn’t muddy) let everyone listen with a more reasonable level of amplification. I understand it draws a more adult crowd. It would cost something to set up initially, but I’d count it as a worthwhile infrastructure improvement to the Square.
I will probably weigh in on the volume issue later when I have some time but…you can make this up…
I went to the Nightfall website:
http://www.downtownchattanooga.org/nightfall/
First comment:
Volume Level
Could we get some sound guys that still have their hearing? There are speakers located throughout the Plaza. No need for the sound to be heard seven blocks away.
Don
Interesting article, don’t you think that Sundown is responsible for the resurgence of Market Square? This whole debate reminds me of when Apple foolishly decided that they didn’t need Steve Jobs anymore-
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