I am delited to say that the crowds for the Cherry Blossom Festival's "Bloomfest" activities were so great that I was unable to get anywhere near the tents in which it was held, near the Welcome Center. I had hoped to meet Charles Burns and see his Japanese-style paintings and calligraphy, but there was a very slow-moving traffic jam on park drive, and the nearest place I found to park was over a mile away, down a slope, less than 20 minutes before closing time. Given my knee surgeries, I was not about to try to race to the tents before closing, and then have to walk another mile back down a slope (downslopes are difficult for me). Nor did I even have the chance to take more than one foto, when the SUV ahead of me stopped to let an (Oriental) family of 5 or so out while the driver went to look for a parking spot.
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Since I had told him I was going to try to get there, I sent him this email:
For some reason, my camera just could not handle the indistinct edges of the flowering cherry trees, nor the liting. This is the best my graffics program could achieve, to what I actually saw out my car window. The lite was actually brite, despite forecasts of showers and cloudiness, and the trees were nearly brilliant in the sun.
I tried to get to Bloomfest, but I never before saw so many people in any Newark park, ever. There was a solid line of traffic past the tent(s) (and I couldn't even take pix from the car of the tent or tents, nor stop long enuf to see how many tents there might be), and the nearest parking spot I found was well over a MILE away, at 4:42pm. Since you said you would be there until (only) 5pm, I was not about to try to walk a mile before 5pm and have to walk back a mile after trudging thru the crowds.
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Ordinarily, if crowds and lack of parking barred the Sunday, I could go out to take pix, if only of the blooms, on Monday. Alas, we are supposed to have 3 days of rain, and by the end of that time, the display will have passed its peak, and perhaps even most of the flowers will have been knocked off the trees onto the ground by raindrops. I did see a great many new trees staked up in new locations along the way, but there are still big swaths of the park with not a single cherry tree.
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The weather turned out to be much better than predicted. I trust you did well with sales.
There are enormous numbers of spring-flowering trees in Newark, and not just in Branch Brook Park. This weeping cherry and magnolia are on Silver Street in my neighborhood, Vailsburg.
That evening, Charles sent this brief reply: Full report later, when I've had some sleep.
Yes, it was PACKED, and I completely sold out of painted parasols.
The next day, he sent more info. He will serve, now, as the Newark USA Bloomfest correspondent.
The magnolia, on the right in this view, blooms massively in April and sends up a few scattered flowers in July. I don't know why, nor whether this is commonplace among magnolias.
So, now that I've had some time to recover here's my Bloomfest report:
I arrived at the vendor area (the Cherry Blossom Visitor's Center parking lot) at about 8:30AM to set up my tent, since the paperwork I received from the county said we needed to be set up by 10AM. When I pulled into the lot, I saw that most vendors were already there and set up, and there were more than last year. Many were returns, however: There was a kite vendor, various jewelry vendors, two booths selling framed photos of cherry blossoms, plenty of Essex County public service information booths, a few activity booths for kids, and of course, food.
I wish the food had been more Japanese or at least East Asian-themed, rather than hot dogs, sausage-and-peppers and fried dough, but there was a vegetarian sushi vendor who I think was new this year. He told me that he wasn't allowed to serve any fish, due to the fact that it would be too difficult to keep it on ice all day.
The petals of the magnolia are much larger than those of the weeping cherry, but they are actually much closer in color than these fotos suggest.
My friend Marc and I set up our tent and got to know our neighbors, two very friendly jewelry-makers from Belleville. Sure enough, by 10AM, the police were herding all the vendors' cars out of the lot, sending us to park over in the Clara Maas lot across the street. Closer vendor parking would have been nice, but the walk back wasn't terrible and at least parking was free. I should remark, also, that the vendor fee for Bloomfest was a VERY reasonable $50.
Despite threats of rain, and an overcast start to the day, the weather turned out beautifully.
By 11AM, the official "start" of Bloomfest, we had a steady stream of foot traffic. I didn't make a sale until about 12:30, due to people arriving and checking out the various booths and items for sale. After my first sale, my parasols went like hotcakes. I was so busy I didn't have time to go check out any of the performances or martial arts demos or origami classes either on the main stage or the visitor's center. By 3:30PM, I had sold out of parasols. I brought 25 with me and they were all gone, at $20 each. I also sold a number of paper lanterns I had painted and two small paintings.
This is some kind of white-flowering tree on Smith Street in Vailsburg.
Various relatives and friends stopped by my booth, and were impressed with the cherry blossoms and with Branch Brook Park in general. A common reaction was, "I didn't even know something like this was in Newark". Most everyone agreed they would happily come back next year.
I agree with your assessment that this was the most people I've ever seen at a public event in Newark ever. It was so crowded that it took me over an hour to get back to the vendor area with my car to close up shop after 5PM.
For me, Bloomfest was a decided success, and I'll be back next year with a new stock of painted Japanese-inspired crafts.
Diagonally across the intersection from the pink-flowering trees is this forsythia.
A few questions remained in my mind, so I followed up. Charles graciously replied, interspersing my questions/thoughts with his own answers/remarks.
Me: Terrific. I take it from your mention of last year that you were present last year, so can compare the crowds, mood, etc., year to year. Would you say the crowd was 10% larger, 20%, 50%, what?
CB: I was there the last two years, as a spectator. I live in the south end of Bloomfield, not far from the Newark and Belleville border, so when I heard that Newark had good cherry blossoms, I was really excited and had to check it out.
South half of front yard of small apartment house near me. This side has yellow tulips, which are already almost all up. The other side has red tulips, few of which are up. I have noticed the same thing in my yard: lite-colored tulips bloom first. I don't know why.
Two years ago, there was some Japanese drumming, some food tents and trucks, and I think a Karate demonstration, but there was no "Cherry Blossom Welcome Center" and there were a lot fewer people.
Last year was the debut of the Welcome Center, and there were a lot more activities and vendors, but this year, I'd say there was about 20% more of everything from displays to vendors to guests. It was a really big event. Still not on the scale of the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens' blossom fest, but close -- and of course the trees in Newark are much better. I invited numerous Brooklynites, some of whom came, and they remarked that even if the "festival" was smaller than the Brooklyn one, the blossoms themselves in Newark were far superior.
For the first time that I have noticed, even the small front yard of the 4-family apartment house nextdoor had a couple of daffodils and a few little, flat blue flowers.
Me: I take the enormous attendance as both a sign that attitudes toward Newark have already changed and that we are at least at the edge of a more generalized era of good feeling. Because you know that ALL those people who had a good time yesterday are going to tell people about it, and word of mouth from people you trust is much more important than anything media could say.
CB: Agreed. I could see it in action. Just the fact that there were so many families, of all races: black, white, Hispanic, Indian, Chinese, Filipino and Japanese — all mingling and having a great time together — was fantastic.
Me: You say you had your own tent? I saw what appeared to be a very large tent or tents put up the organizers — very good thinking, to have tents in the unpredictable weather of April. How many tents were there?
CB: I'm not sure how many, because I mostly stayed in and near my own tent. But, I'd estimate something like 40-50, including food vendors. It was about the size of a small to mid-sized NYC street fair.
Between my house and the corner with the big pink-flowering trees is this little front yard with a few white hyacinths, some dandelions, and a big cluster of tiny blue, composite flowers in the shape of a Christmas tree.
Me: The Cherry Blossom Festival, not surprisingly, attracts many Orientals (which reminds me, were the customers for your parasols and such Orientals or Occidentals/blacks?)
CB: I had customers of all kinds. Many were Orientals who bought parasols for their kids and then had them pose under the blossoms in formal Japanese attire. Some were eccentric Americans, like the guy with full sleeves of Japanese Oni (devil) tattoos, who bought my Oni-mask parasol, or the circus performer who bought the octopus one for his juggling act.
There's a large and ever-growing Japanese population in Edgewater, and a huge Indian population in Jersey City. Lots of Filipinos in Bloomfield, Belleville and Jersey City, and even some Chinese still in North Newark in the Broadway area, though there's no official "Chinatown". I saw a number of tour buses actually, so I assume maybe some of those were from Bergen County or the like.
The previous view showed the flowers in relation to some stairs, to give you a sense of scale. This view shows the flowers to themselves. Last year, I saw only a few. This year, there's a mass of them.
Me: [T]he planners will have to do a better job with parking and transportation.
CB: I agree, the parking situation was terrible. The hospital lot was only for vendors.
Me: It occurs to me that they should make arrangements with one of the parking lots Downtown that are largely empty on Sundays and provide a shuttle-bus service free or at very low cost (say, a quarter per person, given how many families attend, or $1 per adult and 50 cents per walking child, tops), with frequent trips and even their own entrance to the Welcome Center. (That is, there may be an approach to the parking lot from streets outside the Park, so a gate could be placed in the chainlink fence at the closest approach, so the minibus (or regular bus) could get to that area without having to suffer traffic jams on the Park drive, and let people off within a very short walk of the Welcome Center activities.
I don't know if I saw only the tail end or front end of the growing season for these little flowers last year, or whether they actually did multiply by dozens in one year. If the latter, how? Seed? Runners? I wish I had some. Maybe the birds I have been feeding will drop some of those seeds into my yard.
CB: The Newark Light Rail stops very near — walking distance — from the Welcome Center. That's how my wife and kids got from our place in Bloomfield to the blossoms. People parking in downtown Newark or anywhere along the Light Rail line could do the same.
Me: There is also an unused parking structure at the old United Hospital complex alongside I-280 closer to the Welcome Center. I assume it is structurally sound, even tho it presumably hasn't been used in recent years. I know of no regular bus that goes to the Park, but we could certainly institute, with NJTransit or as a City of Newark Tourism Dept. operation, a new "loop" with occasional stops from the Cathedral to the lions to the Ballantine Gate to the Welcome Center to the Mill Street streamside.
CB: It would be nice to see a Light Rail line (perhaps a third line) that hit all the stops. Right now, between the two operational lines, many of those stops like NJPAC, the Museum, the Library, Branch Brook Park, The Prudential Center, etc. are covered, but many out-of-towners and suburbanites are only just learning about and using the Light Rail.
I have to say, however, that Light Rail ridership has gone way up in the last year.
Back down at the Silver Street corner, a host of flat little blue flowers like the few in the yard nextdoor to me, forms a low mass on a small slope.
Me: The City did finally set up a Tourism dept, by whatever name. This is the kind of thing it ought to be doing, and replacing ugly streetlites with decorative ones near the Old Essex County Courthouse and other sites that tourists will want to take fotos of, etc.
CB: Good, clearly Bloomfest was promoted much better this year than previously. Hopefully the city can work as hard to promote some of its other attractions.
I'll be interested to see what the City and County do to remedy the problems of traffic and parking next year.
