Was up at 71st and Ogontz last night to catch the two Friday evening headliners, two of my favorite R&B/jazz performers, Pieces of a Dream and Roy Ayers. I and a (younger, white, gay male) friend of mine hit the Broad Street Line around 7:15 and arrived at the festival at 7:45, just as Pieces of a Dream were jammin' through the middle of one of their best-known (and my favorite) songs, "Mt. Airy Groove."

We both had a blast. We strolled the booths, bought T-shirts, books and shea butter soap, and pigged out on ribs from Abner's. Here we had an object lesson in differing standards: My friend absolutely loved the ribs -- "the best I've had in years," he said. "They're good, but I've had much better," said I. While I wouldn't be hesitant to serve Abner's ribs to guests -- and their sauces are very good, all three of them -- those ribs would probably get laughed off the plate if they were to be offered to customers of a Kansas City Q joint. I promised to bring some Gates' Q back for my friend someday -- and advised him that this legendary establishment wasn't even the best in town.

We left around 9:40, just after Roy Ayers finished up "Everybody Loves the Sunshine," so we could make it back into town before the cheap drink specials ended at a local bar I frequent. Here was the only sour note in the entire evening: Service on the Route 6 bus southbound was screwed up royally. There was a large clump of people waiting at 71st and Ogontz for the southbound bus when we got to the detour stop; a few minutes later, someone spotted a southbound bus whizzing through the street intersection two blocks away where the buses had been detoured. I decided right then that we would walk down Ogontz until we saw a bus coming. We were not passed by a single southbound 6 bus in the 30 minutes we spent walking from that bus stop to Broad and Olney -- where we saw a northbound 6 -- the fourth such bus we passed -- pull out of the terminal as we approached. At least we had an engaging young event staffer as a conversation partner (he lives in Southwest Philly and will be a sophomore at Central High this fall) for the entire walk.

Some comments on the event -- and the community:

--From what I saw on the trip up Ogontz Avenue and the stroll through the business district in the 7100 block, it's an absolute puzzler why Dwight Evans didn't win the mayor's race. And I say that as one of those who voted for Michael Nutter. West Oak Lane is a very attractive neighborhood and the Ogontz business strip tidy and busy. If he could do this for West Oak Lane, he certainly could have done the same for the city as a whole. OTOH, this probably also explains why Evans ran away with the 10th Ward -- his home turf -- in the primary.

-- The audience says something about Philadelphian parochialism. Or maybe it says something about the promotion of the event. Or maybe both. I wouldn't have known about the festival had a friend of mine who works in La Salle's PR office (we were colleagues at Penn) mentioned it to me over dinner the week before, and I'll wager that many others outside West Oak Lane might have gotten the first word via the early evening news that night on Fox-29, one of the festival co-sponsors. (It's only been in the last couple of days that you could hear radio co-sponsor WJJZ 97.5 in much of Philadelphia and its western and southern suburbs, so there was another avenue that much of the potential audience missed.) In any case, it looked to me like most of those in attendance were from the immediate vicinity. I hope that's not the case today and tomorrow. Given that all the mainstage concerts are (a) Big Names and (b) free, I'd think that this festival would pack 'em in from all over the area. "But Center City residents won't travel outside it -- they're like Manhattanites," said a friend of mine at the bar afterwards when I remarked to him on this.

--SEPTA sucks. At least last night it did. Their performance on the return trip was inexcusable. I hope that was an isolated incident, but the 6 runs often enough that we should have seen a southbound bus on that half-hour walk. We didn't.

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Sandy Smith, Exile on Market Street, Philadelphia
"Jazz and blogging are both intimate, improvisational, and individual -- but also inherently collective. And the audience talks over both." --Andrew Sullivan, "Why I Blog," The Atlantic, November 2008

Great post. The West oak lane Jazz Festival is in its fourth year so hopefully as it grows the word will get out about it.

About your comments about West Oak Lane. So true. Evans and the people who live there have done wonders and are really turning that community around. I see homes being rehabbed all the time and people making an investment in the area.

I live in East Oak Lane and our two communities have linked up for shared projects to make our neighborhoods nicer. Some folks have these communities stuck in a time warp of 20 years ago. A lot has changed for the better and it is nice that some one has acknowledged that publicly.

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"My concern has been the atrocities there in Darfur and the relevance to me with that issue as we spoke about Africa and some of the countries there that were kind of the people succumbing to the dictators and the corruption of some collapsed governments on the continent, the relevance was Alaska’s investment in Darfur with some of our permanent fund dollars."

Sarah Palin

I love festivals and when I return to the city,I hope to visit this festival.

Sorry for pulling this old post up but just came across it

I think they did a larger volume of advertising than in times past, I'd actually posted about this in events also during the time of the festival this and last year didn't think to post it here (duh) Yet I think this year and last year was pretty well advertized and that individuals were from all over the city whereas it typically is or at least appears to be primarily the locals (oak lane olney mt airy gtown).

If it stays the size it was this year I'd be fine with that, it was pretty packed I'm spoiled by the freedom to move around a bit better but it's definately worth that lack of comfort if more people know about it.

And Friday definately had less people than Sat & Sun, Friday doesn't typically have the outdoor events like it did this year so that may be why it was slower and I got to have my normal comfort. And so you know for the future they have a suttle that comes from independance hall at least that's how it's been the past couple of years not sure what'll happen next year of course. They also have pics at uwishunu.com, one of the sponsors this year.

Speaking of what Evans has done for west oak lane, the'll be free movie night tonight off of haines st. There is still work to be done in terms of the actual residence yet I too applaud what Evans has done for this district.