Fargo, ND.

Summer street fairs are a popular tradition in the United States. They are a great way to celebrate the warm weather, enjoy delicious food, and support small businesses, many of them local. Some are held weekly, some monthly, but most smaller fairs like Fargo’s, are held annually.

The weekend of July 13-15, 2023 brought over a hundred vendors and about 150,000 visitors to Fargo this year. About seven blocks of downtown Fargo’s Broadway are blocked off from vehicle traffic and the street is filled with tents and people.

Lynn and I were joined by our daughter and grandson and we started at the south end of the fair on Broadway. All along the way, buskers provided music to accompany our journey. At a booth featuring Native American products, a group was playing for the guests, a tip jar was available for our thank-you donation and CDs were available for purchase. We stopped and listened for a short time, I captured a quick photograph and left a tip answered with a nod and a “thank you” smile from the guitar player.

The majority of vendors at the Fargo Street Fair are peddling their crafted products. I picked a representative sample of crafters offering their products for sale. Steve creates metal yard ornaments that feature a light bulb with a solar cell at the bulb’s base. The fixture charges the internal battery during the day and the LED bulb lights the way at night.

Broadway is an excellent avenue for the street fair as along the way, visitors pass some of Fargo’s historic buildings. The Fargo Theatre is an art deco design. Opened at its downtown location on Broadway in 1926, the theater was restored in 1999 to its historic appearance and now is a center for the arts in the Fargo-Moorhead metropolitan area. The Fargo Theatre has a seating capacity of 870 people. The single-screen theater shows a variety of films, including independent, foreign, and classic films. The venue also hosts a variety of events, such as concerts, plays, and comedy shows.

Paul Peng proudly showed me his display of Banzai trees. The display was divided into areas that featured trees that grow best in sunlight (left side of the photo) and trees that do well in the shade (behind Paul on the right.)

One popular booth featured Pyrographer Laura Scheving. Laura is on the left enjoying a visit with a guest while other guests are looking at her display of artwork. You can click on the image above to view it via my Flickr site for a better look at her beautiful wood-burned art.

When I first saw her booth, Laura was busy working on a new project. I asked her what she called the type of art and she said, “Pyrography”. Even my simple brain put the two parts of the word together as a pyrotechnic photograph. In writing this post, I looked up the definition on Wikipedia here. “Pyrography or pyrogravure is the free handed art of decorating wood or other materials with burn marks resulting from the controlled application of a heated object such as a poker. It is also known as pokerwork or wood burning. The term means “writing with fire”, from the Greek pyr and graphos.“

Near the north end of the street fair, I captured this view of the Ford Building. It was built in 1915 as an assembly plant for Ford Motor Company. The building is located next to the Great Northern Railroad tracks for easy shipment of supplies and finished products. The third floor was the assembly plant. Approximately 75 people were employed here on opening day, and that number grew to about 200 when the building was fully staffed.

The Ford Motor Company ceased assembling cars here in 1927, but the factory continued to be used for other purposes. In 2009, the Ford Building was renovated and converted into office space and residential condominiums.

Alissa of Alikat Studios was busy drawing a caricature of a woman and likely her daughter. For these photos, I asked permission to photograph the vendor and in this case, I asked the subject of the artwork if it was OK to use the result of the artwork in my photograph. Permissions were freely given. I also asked each vendor I photographed if they wanted a copy of their image and I emailed photos without watermarks to those who requested. I got a follow-up request to use my photo on one of the vendor’s websites, and the license to do so was promptly provided.

Of course, fair food is the obligatory lunch or snack. We wisely wait until we’ve seen the entire street fair before choosing a place to be sure we select our lunch from the perfect vendor to enjoy some of that decadent fair food.

On Main Avenue, just a block west of Broadway, we walked by a building that has memories for me. For several years, I was a business partner with colleagues and ran a small computer store. At one point, we left our storefront on Main Avenue and moved into one of the spaces inside the Delendrecie Building.

The DeLendrecie Building was built in 1894 as a department store for O.J. DeLendrecie & Company. It is a four-story brick building and is one of the most recognizable buildings in the city. After DeLendrecie’s Department Store moved to the city’s largest mall, the building was used for a variety of purposes, including offices, apartments, and retail space. In 1987, the building was renovated and converted into a mixed-use development. It is now home to apartments, retail space, and a parking garage.

One note on the small garden in the foreground. It was created in honor of Suffragists. Details in an upcoming Cellpic Sunday. I have posted all of these photos in 2K HD on my Flickr site here for anyone who likes to pixel peep or find out the specifics of camera and lens combinations.

John Steiner