Fort Worth Main Street Arts Festival Is Back With Sasha Bass Threatening To Ruin Everything

The Fort Worth Main Street Arts Festival is an event the likes of which I have never seen done better, anywhere.

I was so impressed with the Main Street Arts Festival, way back when I first attended it, the following year I made a Fort Worth Main Street Arts Festival webpage.

This event takes place in downtown Fort Worth. Well, there was that one year around the turn of the century when a tornado wreaked havoc in downtown Fort Worth, causing the Main Street Arts Festival to move off Main Street to head a couple miles west to what is known in Fort Worth as the Cultural District.

So, this year a civil war of sorts has broken in downtown Fort Worth caused by Queen Sasha Bass.

We have blogged about this ongoing debacle a couple times, in...

Upcoming High Noon Shootout Between Sundance Sasha & Reata Micallef and in Time To Worry About Sundance Sasha With Lady Whistleworth.

Apparently, Queen Sasha got into some sort of turf war with the Main Street Arts Festival.

Sasha initiated a competing arts festival featuring local artists, with the local artists showing their arts in the area known as Sundance Square Plaza, that being the little square built on parking lots after years of confusing Fort Worth's few tourists with signs pointing to Sundance Square, where there was no square, til the parking lots were turned into one.

A lifelong DFW native sent my phone that which you see above, with the text about Queen Sasha ruining everything, along with photos of the Main Street Arts Festival, which opened on Thursday and runs through Sunday.

That same lifelong DFW native also asked me if I was Fort Worth Duke, a new entry on Instagram, doing the same, I assume, well written snarkiness about Queen Sasha and the ongoing downtown Fort Worth debacle, currently on Instagram as Lady Whistleworth and Fort Worth Confidential.

I blogged about Lady Whistleworth in Time To Worry About Sundance Sasha With Lady Whistleworth, but do not remember if I blogged about Fort Worth Confidential. I do remember that I had intended to do so, after getting a blog comment pointing me to Fort Worth Confidential.

Oh, and I am not Fort Worth Duke...

The Cold Dawn Of The 21st Morning Of April In Texas

The view through the bars of my patio prison cell on this 21st morning of April indicates the sky over this part of the planet is free of clouds.

What you can not see via the view through the bars of my patio prison cell is that it is only 16 degrees above freezing in the outer world.

48 degrees. Brrrr.

The temperature predictors are predicting a high of 75, with low humidity today.

This would seem to be a perfect day to go to the Fort Worth Main St. Arts Festival.

The last time I went to the Main St. Arts Festival it was a cloudy, hot, muggy Saturday. Today will not be a cloudy, hot, muggy Saturday.

I think I will go swimming now before it gets any colder and ponder whether or not I want to go to the bother of going to downtown Fort Worth today to mingle with a HUGE crowd of people.

Main St. Fort Worth Arts Festival April 19 - 22 On Historic Red Bricks

I was surprised yesterday to learn, via an email from the Downtown Fort Worth, Inc. people that it is already that time of year that the Main St. Fort Worth Arts Festival takes place.

Thursday, April 19, through Sunday, April 22, to be exact.

The first time I experienced the Main St. Fort Worth Arts Festival it did not take place in Downtown Fort Worth.

A tornado spun its way through Downtown Fort Worth on March 28, 2000, wreaking havoc with Main Street and other streets in Downtown Fort Worth, so that year the Arts Festival was moved to the location where Fort Worth tries to contain its culture, the Cultural District.

I was less than 2 years into my Texas Exile when I experienced the Main St. Arts Festival. This was to be the first time in Texas, and in Fort Worth, that I experienced something that was better done than I'd experienced elsewhere.

In other words the Main St. Fort Worth Arts Festival is bigger and better than any similar festival I ever attended in Washington.

The Main St. Fort Worth Arts Festival was also the first place I experienced the bizarre Texas custom of making you buy coupons in order to buy something like a hot dog and a Coke. You wait in one line to trade your dollars for coupons and then you wait in another line to pay for your hot dog and Coke with coupons.

A Texan later told me, after I experienced the coupon payment method at the State Fair of Texas, that the reason for the coupon method was that it was too hard to find short term help that was able to make change, but that they were able to count coupons.

I also later learned that there were parts of Texas where people could be found who could make change and thus the coupon purchase method was not used, like Canton First Mondays. It being another Texas thing that is better and bigger than I've ever experienced anywhere else.

There is a blurb on the promotional poster, above, that about sums up the Main St. Fort Worth Arts Festival...

"Let your imagination spin wild at one of the top-rated arts festivals in America. Enjoy revolutionary art, sensational music and delectable food on the historic red bricks of Downtown. The Main St. Fort Worth Arts Festival - a kaleidoscope of sight, sound and soul."

Historic red bricks? What is it with Fort Worth and its red bricks. I remember years ago asking a Fort Worth native I called Beth the Reporter why Camp Bowie Boulevard is a cobblestoned mess. She told me that the brick roadway was unique and Fort Worth kept it because it is so special.

I informed Beth the Reporter that there was nothing special or unique about that cobblestoned road. I recollect asking her if she'd been to the Texas town of Ennis, which has a cobblestoned street. I have seen several towns in Texas with cobblestoned streets and squares.

What is historic about the red bricks of downtown Fort Worth? Does anyone know?

2010 Fort Worth MAIN ST. Arts Festival

In April, Fort Worth has two BIG festivals. First up is the Main Street Arts Festival, opening Thursday, April 8 at 10am.

Then on Saturday, April 24, the Tandy Hills come alive with the sights and sounds of the Prairie Fest.

I have not gone to the MAIN ST. Arts Festival in a few years. It is by far the best of this type festival that I've gone to. This was the first event type thing I saw in Texas that impressed me as being the best I'd ever seen.

Canton First Monday Trade Days is another Texas event, the likes and size of which, I've seen no where else.

When I was at the Fremont Sunday Market, in Seattle, in August of 2008 a lady showed up, conversed, I noticed the accent, asked if she was from Texas. She was. Austin. She gave me her business card. It had an example of her art. I asked if she'd displayed at the Fort Worth Main Street Arts Festival, because her art looked familiar. She said she's there every year. I'll find her, this year, but she won't remember me. Probably.

Click for more info about the Main Street Arts Festival...

Next Week: Main Street Fort Worth Arts Festival

In 9 days the Main Street Fort Worth Arts Festival starts up. Of the festivals I've been to, in the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex, this one has been the best, in my opinion. It's huge, it attracts a lot of people, it has 3 music/performance stages, it has a lot of food options (although you have to buy coupons to buy food, American currency is not accepted) and it has an incredible variety of art from all over America.

I'm hoping to go this year. Earlier in the year I had hoped to go to the Fort Worth Stock Show Parade, but that didn't work out. One more hope, I hope the weather, April 16 through 19, is as perfect as today. That would be a real good thing. The last time I went to the Main Street Fort Worth Arts Festival it was overcast, hot and very very muggy. Not a good thing.

If I remember right an incoming storm wreaked havoc with last year's Main Street Festival. Or was that the year before. Time flies.

2009 Fort Worth Main Street Arts Festival

In less than a month downtown Fort Worth gets really busy with the Main Street Arts Festival, starting on Thursday, April 16, ending Sunday, April 19.

The Main Street Arts Festival is the one and only thing I've been to in Fort Worth that is better than any similar thing I've been to anywhere else.

Well, there is the Fort Worth Stockyards. They are definitely the best Stockyards I've ever seen.

But the Main Street Arts Festival, it is something about which the Star-Telegram could actually use its making towns far and wide "green with envy" verbiage and have it actually be possibly true for once.

The Main Street Arts Festival is not some flea market on steroids. Actual artists come from all over America to display their work here. Some of it is very expensive. As in thousands of dollars type expensive. The Festival is sort of like going to an outdoor museum. With music stages and food.

From the Official Main Street Arts Festival website...

BREAKING NEWS: Headliner entertainment announced! MAIN ST. now ranked #3 Fine Arts festival in the U.S.! The MAIN ST. Fort Worth Arts Festival hosts tens of thousands of people annually during the four-day visual arts, entertainment and culture event. MAIN ST. showcases a nationally recognized fine art and fine craft juried art fair, savory food, live concerts, performance artists and street performers on the streets of downtown Fort Worth. The net result: fun!

There are only a couple vexing things about the Main Street Arts Festival. With the loss of the huge Tandy Subway parking lots, it is not as easy as it used to be to find parking in downtown Fort Worth.

The other vexing thing is this festival uses the coupon method for buying food and drinks. You wait in a line to buy coupons at 50 cents each. Then you wait in another line to buy something. This was the first event I'd ever been to where the use of American currency was not allowed and had to be exchanged for another currency, that being coupons. The State Fair of Texas uses the coupon method, too.

A lifelong Texan explained the reason for the coupon method. Apparently it is difficult to find Texans willing to work at these food purveyor jobs who are able to make change. So, coupons simplify the process. I suppose coupons also make it more difficult to steal. Although the State Fair of Texas had a coupon stealing scandal a couple years ago.

Anyway, if you haven't been to it before, and you live in the D/FW zone, you really should experience the Main Street Arts Festival. Unless you have a strong aversion to big crowds. I'm planning on going this year. I met a lady from Austin at the Fremont Sunday Market last summer, during my period of indentured servitude, who is an artist at the Main Street Arts Festival. I told her I'd see her there this year. I always do what I say I'm going to do. Usually.