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Sophistafunk’s lead singer Jack Brown jumped around on the NY State of Health Center Stage, hyping up the 200 to 300 people nearby.

“Westcott Nation, we’re back,” he told the audience.

The Syracuse band headlined the Westcott Street Cultural Fair this evening, the first fair since 2019 due to the pandemic. The organizers anticipated this year’s turnout would be lower than in previous years, but the fair ended up one thousand visitors away from breaking its record of 11,000 guests, Westcott Fair chairperson Sharon Sherman said. Westcott residents and people from the greater Syracuse region filled Westcott Street from noon to 6:30 p.m. to celebrate the diverse community known as the Westcott Nation.

Debra Gertz, a Westcott neighborhood resident, has attended every Westcott Street Cultural Fair since its inception in 1991. The Westcott resident felt hesitant about coming to this year’s event with the recent spike in COVID-19 cases, she said.

“It’s really wonderful, and it’s a little mixed because of the outbreak and the pandemic is still happening,” Gertz said. “I like that it feels a little mellow today compared to other years.”

Sherman agreed that today would turn out to be a lighter crowd than previous years. She compared the Westcott fair’s attendance lull to the attendance issue the Great New York State Fair faced due to the pandemic.

The total number of visitors for this year’s fair came to 10,013, Sherman confirmed and said that that’s about the average number when the fair has bad weather.

To avoid the crowds roaming along Westcott Street, Gertz stationed herself by the Health Center stage with her mask on to see her friend and Westcott favorite Colleen Kattau perform with her band, Dos XX. Kattau opened her set with a shout out to the neighborhood, yelling, “it’s about to get more Westcott Nation.”

The fair brings people together to celebrate the culture and history of “Westcott Nation.”
Louis Platt | Culture Editor

Kattau and Dos XX’s music primarily honors women and Latin culture, both of which Sherman said are represented at the fair.

“We have a mixture of diverse groups (at the fair),” she said. “This neighborhood is a mixed group.”

There were about 120 tables at the fair, from artist Jaleel Campbell’s “Jalethal Dolls” stand to an upcycling clothes vendor. Colleen Brown runs Colleen’s Creative Outlet Upcycled Clothing, a clothing business that sells used clothing after making alterations to it, and she has sold at the fair on numerous occasions. Brown said she’s a part of the “Westcott clique” despite living about 30 miles north of Syracuse.

While she’s come to love the environment of the fair, the students from the nearby schools play a big role in her returning each year, Brown said.

She likes to follow college students’ clothing trends when she’s making alterations, especially before attending the fair. As she described that pleated skirts are “in,” she called the attention of a customer browsing through the skirt rack.

“Today, everybody had the pleated skirts on. Am I right?” Brown asked the customer.

Even though the fair saw a solid resurgence of visitors this year, it came with some hindrances along the planning process, Sherman said. The fair had to dip into its reserve fund to finance some of its art projects.

“It’s been pretty tough,” Sherman said.

kids’ corner fun!!!

A photo posted by
westcottstreetculturalfair2021

These minor bumps in the road didn’t seem to alter the atmosphere of the entire event. Martha Stansberry, a member of the University Christian Fellowship, was selling sweet buttered corn, chicken wings and salt potatoes today for the organization’s scholarship program. She noticed the crowd was thinner today than other years that she tabled for UCF, but she said people were noticeably nice to each other today.

“People seem a lot happier, and people are just very generous to each other,” Stansberry said.

Festivalgoer Sylvia Lewis shared the sentiment that the crowd seemed united and excited to be back together. The fair offered visitors and members of the Westcott Nation the chance to “be human and together again,” she said.

While the fair didn’t have a strict masking rule, the organizers were following guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Sherman said. But, if she had children younger than 12 years old, she would have been concerned about bringing them to the fair, she said.

Sherman expected to see fewer children at this year’s fair because they are not eligible for vaccination yet. Another fairgoer, Morgan Jantzi, opted to bring her young daughter this year.

“You have to live your life,” Jantzi said.

Korrie Flowers, a mother of four children all under 12 years old, brought her kids this year as well. Flowers started attending the fair in her teenage years and wanted to make sure her children were able to experience it, too. The mother’s prerequisite to coming was that her kids had to remain masked at all times, she said.

This way, the kids could participate in the “Kids Race,” which she said is the main thing they look forward to.

“The Westcott fair is something to bring our whole community together,” Flowers said. “We can all come together and explore new things.”

Published on September 27, 2021 at 1:05 am

Contact Louis: louis@dailyorange.com | @JBL__98