THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, June 6, 1996 TAG: 9606060077
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY STEPHEN HARRIMAN, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 129 lines
TOMORROW BEGINS the 20th anniversary celebration of Norfolk's Harborfest, and that of its subdued sister, Portsmouth's Seawall Festival, on opposite banks of the Elizabeth River.
It's our annual summer coming-out party. Big-time party.
People seldom need much of an excuse to party, but they do need a place to do it. And that is what we will really be celebrating this weekend. These events celebrate the rebirth of a waterfront that had long suffered from benign neglect.
In the beginning, which is to say 1977, it wasn't even called Harborfest. But once it was, the name was guarded jealously, occasionally with the threat of lawsuits to potential usurpers.
It was an idea that was conceived in the wake of tall ships that came into the harbor on their way to New York to celebrate the nation's 200th birthday in 1976, and it was the principal venue for celebrating Norfolk's 300th birthday in 1982.
Harborfest at 20. If you're, say twenty-something yourself, that must seem like nearly forever. Maybe you even wonder why such a party as this hasn't been going on forever.
But if you're much older than that AND if you've been around long enough to remember the first one. . . well, let me tell you about that.
When those tall ships, part of what was called Operation Sail, hoved into the inner harbor, some 85,000 people flocked to see them.
Hey, someone said, we could do this every year.
Five cities - Norfolk, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York and New London - got together and loosely organized an East Coast Harbor Festival for 1977. In Norfolk it would be a three-day event featuring sailing ships, stunts, music, food and FIREWORKS.
Fireworks quickly became Harborfest's piece de resistance - thousands and thousands of dollars worth of fireworks going KA-BOOM in the night sky to a great chorus or ooohs and aaahs.
More than 100 big sailing vessels were invited. Three showed up. But so did a crowd estimated at 120,000, drawn to a still ratty waterfront. And that was truly amazing.
There was no Waterside festival marketplace then, only vacant land - waterfront property. . . just sitting there! - where once there had been wharves and warehouses and tugboats, car ferries and cargo vessels. There was a rough gravel and shell parking lot where Town Point Park now flourishes. I watched the Saturday night fireworks sitting on broken chunks of concrete rip-rap as smelly water lapped at my feet.
And so Harborfest was born. And with that turnout came the realization that rotting piers and warehouses, the remnants of what was once the lifeblood of the old port city, could and should give way to gleaming structures designed for work, residence and play, the realization that people who normally avoided downtown areas would flock there to participate in colorful activities.
It had brought together what are arguably the area's two most precious assets: the people and the water.
The name ``Harborfest'' came out of a meeting involving Tim Jones and John Sears, two of the early promoters of the event, and others. No one seems to remember exactly who suggested it. But on Oct. 5, 1982, it was registered with the U.S. Patents and Trademarks Office.
The city of Boston found out in 1984 just how serious Norfolk was about ``Harborfest'' when the Yankee seaport tried to appropriate the name. Boston backed off when the words ``federal court'' were mentioned.
The same year Portsmouth officials had decided to sacrifice the name ``Seawall Festival'' which it has been using for its south bank activities and voted to call its 1984 event ``Harborfest at Portside.''
Norfolk again responded with the threat of court action. Portsmouth, like Boston, backed off. However, both sides agreed to increase cooperation.
Harborfest got so big so quickly it was, well, unbelievable.
The crowd was estimated to be about 140,000 in 1978 for Harborfest II.
Officials estimated the crowd at 150,000 in '79, although an independent survey put the figure at 185,000. In 1980, nearly 400,000 (estimated) attended, including representatives from NBC News, People magazine, National Geographic, Newsday, the Boston Globe and nine other out-of-town media types.
Writer George Plimpton, a self-confessed fireworks nut, came to see the 1981 pyrotechnic display, along with an estimated 449,999 others. Next year an estimated 750,000 turned out to celebrate Norfolk's 300th birthday.
For the first time, someone questioned the attendance figures. That was Sam Barfield, commissioner of the revenue, who was looking at sales receipts.
Next year, 1983, Harborfest really came of age. That was the year that Waterside and Town Point Park opened. Barfield again questioned the 750,000 crowd estimate for the same reason.
Attendance figures continued to inflate - 950,000 in 1984 and 800,000 to 1 million in 1985.
Wait a minute. That's about how many people live in all of South Hampton Roads. Did EVERYBODY come?
The 10th anniversary celebration, which included 10 tall ships on the way to New York harbor for the unveiling of a renovated Statue of Liberty, marked the first revised attendance estimates. The new, probably more realistic, figure for 1985 was 386,000.
But, hey, who's counting heads when you're busy having fun?
In recent years, Harborfest has become smaller on purpose. For one thing, the size of the venue has decreased with the building of Nauticus and several condos and parking lots where activities once took place.
When Nauticus opened in 1994, Harborfest officials said, ``It's the perfect opportunity to go back to years ago when the festival first began.
``We're trying to put the focus back on the maritime heritage of the festival, back on the waterfront and families.''
That was the year, too, when Tidewater Regional Transit announced that it would no longer run shuttle service from outlying parking lots to Harborfest and Portsmouth's Seawall Festival. The increased number of multi-level parking lots in the downtown area contributed to less demand for shuttle service. MEMO: Maureen Watts of the Virginian-Pilot research library contributed
to this report, along with scores of staff writers who have chronicled
the festive events through the years in the pages of The Virginian-Pilot
and The Ledger-Star. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
Harborfest: The Susan Constant will be one of the ships in Friday's
Parade of Sail.
Color photo
The Seawall Festival
The Ohio Players will perform at 4 p.m. Saturday.
Color photo
Country star Mark Chesnutt...
[Box]
Harborfest
[List of When, where, how much etc.
Seawall Festival
When, where, how much, etc..
For complete text, see microfilm
KEYWORDS: HARBORFEST by CNB