For this Assignment I worked with Patty looking at the idea of public space and how it is also used as recreational space. We met up outside of Odegaard and decided the perfect opportunity for public space being used for recreation was right at our feet at the 41st University District Street Fair. Trying to incorporate the Ragin reading, we meandered through the stalls from 41st up to 50th trying to find the “ideas” couched in the Fair’s use of the Ave, and then decided what evidence we could draw from that.
This was only the second time I had been to the Street Fair surprisingly enough, having had my fill of the artsy Seattle festival after one too many Folklifes in high school, so I gleefully pointed out all the yuppie hipster Bob Marley insignias as we past and longingly looked at the Shiskaberry stand. Once I moved past that, however, we tried to get into the meat of this assignment. Why did the University District have a street fair? Why were these certain vendors here? How 
did they decide how to breakup the use of space? What was the broad overall feeling of the fair? What was being sold and how much of the fair’s personality could be found within consumerism?
Looking at the use of space, this was a retail area that was selling an image, the somewhat stereotypical image of Seattleites was being fed back to us
. The organic Dave’s Killer Bread handing out free slices, while the free trade, all natural non-bleached baby clothes were being fondled over by expectant mothers drinking Stumptown soy milk lattes. The Seattle culture, however, was still intact underneath all of that and came through with the street performers, and stall owners hawking their wares. The Street Fair’s website cites this experience as a mixture between a festival and a farmer’s market, and this definitely came across
as Patty and I were tasting the Vanilla Coconut kettle korn, watching the participants pass and listening to the bluegrass styli
ngs of the Slimpickins.
So while our research questions focused on our impressions of urban space and how they were being utilized by the public, I think that looking at account of previous University District Street Fairs, through old websites, and pamphlets could give us some internet research on how the community views, and has viewed this celebration. Also we could interview businesses that had been on the Ave for a while and had seen the comings and goings of the Fair, as well as the participants walking around.
To connect this to Amsterdam, looking at the use of recreational space, and public space, while there won’t be any Street Festivals that I can find during our stay, (except for the Prinsengracht Canal Festival from Aug 14-22 which sounds kinda cool) we could look into the famous Vondelpark, which is a grand use of public space being put aside for the recreational use of its citizens. We could also tie similar research methods that I suggested earlier into discovering more about the use of the park.
