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Rising Tides is an opinion column about Mobile. Pensacola is about to hold its 12th annual Foo Foo Fest, which brings up a question that’s been bugging me for about 12 years now: Should Mobile be jealous? For those unfamiliar, Foo Foo Fest is more of an umbrella marketing concept than an actual festival. This year’s lineup includes disparate events from Pensacola Opera, the Pensacola Symphony Orchestra and Pensacola Little Theatre as well as dozens of exhibitions, concerts, music festivals and special-interest conventions. Foo Foo Fest beckons with a promise: We’ve got a lot going on, and if you come visit us now, you’re guaranteed to find something you enjoy. Guess what? Mobile has a lot going on this time of year, too. It’s just a fact of event planning on the central Gulf Coast. You probably don’t want to compete with the Thanksgiving-to-New Year’s holiday season, or with Mardi Gras. It’s too dang hot to do much of anything in the summer. So we go absolutely bananas for about 10 weeks in the spring and again in the fall: We have cook-offs and nonprofit fund-raisers and concerts and festivals of all description. We go to symphonies and plays and county fairs and our art walks are jam-packed because the weather’s nice and we know we’ll run into friends. Foo Foo Fest runs from Oct. 30 to Nov. 10. In the same time frame we’ll have Mobile Ballet and Mobile Symphony Orchestra shows at the Saenger; a Joe Jefferson Players staging of the “Rocky Horror Show;” a plethora of fun fundraisers such as the fourth annual Gulf Coast Mac Down mac-and-cheese battle and Art Soup; athletic events such as the inaugural Jail Break 5k and The Mobile Bay Riders Cycling Club’s first major public ride, Pedal Through the Pines; Halloween-adjacent productions such as a “Spooky Edition” food truck fest and Haunted Riverboat Ghost Tours; a new History Museum of Mobile exhibition called “Mobile in Mourning,” about Victorian-era death practices; and a fine crop of fall and holiday markets. We too could have a festival brand pulled out of thin air to draw attention to it all. As a matter of fact, we used to: It was called Arts Alive!, it ran from 2003 through 2015, and it was designed to bring arts organizations and their audiences together for cross-pollination. One of the people I’ve pestered with all this is David Calametti, the main architect of Arts Alive! He surprised me. “The reason it went away was because it wasn’t necessary,” he said. “It started as a way to fill a vacuum, to get people downtown and showcase our local arts.” That’s reminiscent of BayFest, the city-backed music festival that ran from 1995 to 2015. The core mission was to show people that downtown Mobile, which had fallen into blight in the ‘70s and ‘80s as the city’s economic center of gravity had shifted to the west, was rebounding. Calametti thinks Arts Alive! won its war: It turned a lot of people on to the fact that downtown’s resurgence was accompanied by the rise of a vibrant arts-and-entertainment scene. Individual organizations have been doing a good job of nurturing that audience ever since, he said – but he still thinks there’s potential for “something dynamic” that helps shake people out of a “west Mobile mindset.” Another person I’ve afflicted with my Foo Foo fixation is Angela Montgomery, executive director of the Mobile Arts Council. She noted, quite rightly, that there’s a big apples-and-oranges factor at play. Foo Foo Fest is backed by a nonprofit organization called Art, Culture, Entertainment, Inc., which disburses federal, state, county and private-sector funds, including money from an Escambia County tourist development tax. It’s a funding model unlikely to be replicated here, and it makes ACE a conduit for an enviable level of arts funding: More than $450,000 for 10 grant-funded events at this year’s fest. Montgomery suggested that copying Foo Foo Fest might be counterproductive. She’s more inclined to wonder whether Mobile can capitalize on the traffic it generates, or even do “some sort of cross-promotion with them.” “I mean, we’re all in the arts,” she said. “To me that’s a common interest.” There’s another big distinction to make. I’m outside Pensacola, so I can see the marketing Pensacola directs at the outside world. I’m inside Mobile, so I generally don’t see the marketing that Visit Mobile directs at the outside world. But there’s a lot of that, and much of it is built around identifying specific audiences and catering to their interests. Are you making a day trip to Mobile via Amtrack? They’ve got an itinerary for you. Are you interested in food, or Black history & culture, or historic homes, or the outdoors, or breweries, or Mardi Gras? They’ve got a trail for you. They’ve got so many trails they have a “trail mix” page to list them. That’s not as flashy as a made-up festival, but it’s pretty cool. Is Foo Foo Fest a big idea so good that Mobile should steal it? I’m coming to the conclusion that it isn’t. But I do still wonder if Mobile is ready for its next big idea in the realm of culture, arts and entertainment. I’ll explore this further, but before I do I’d like to hear from you. Is Mobile ready for its next big idea? If so, what do you think it should be? Shoot me a quick email. And we’ll put this whole Foo Foo envy thing behind me. Rising Tides is a column from AL.com exploring all things Mobile. Interested in writing a guest column? Or have a suggestion for a future topic? Email columnist Lawrence Specker at LSpecker@AL.com.
