Oakland’s First Fridays announces temporary closure

The organization that runs First Fridays, Oakland’s most popular monthly street fair, has announced that the event will not operate between January and March 2024 due to financial constraints. 

Rising event costs and the lingering effects of the pandemic, among other factors, have created a cost-to-profit ratio that just isn’t sustainable, First Fridays’ accounts manager Venessa McGhee told SFGATE. 

“Every month, we’re coming out of the pocket to put on the event, and it’s just not working financially,” she said.

First Fridays costs upward of $45,000 each month, McGhee explained, and profits from vendor fees and sponsorships fail to cover half of that. 

First Fridays announced its temporary hiatus in an Instagram post Monday evening, stating that the event’s leadership would search for new sources of funding during the three-month closure. Sponsorships from large companies like Kaiser Permanente and funds from various grants have helped with event costs, McGhee said, but First Fridays still needs to bring in at least another $20,000 a month to sustain itself in the long term. 

“If we continue at this rate, First Fridays will die. We’re trying to figure out how we can keep that from happening,” McGhee said. 

McGhee said she hopes the event can garner the support of large companies with headquarters in downtown Oakland, like Clorox and Pandora. Sponsoring First Fridays might interest these companies because of its positive economic impact on businesses throughout the downtown area, not just the event’s vendors, she said.

Once the event’s block party portion ends at 9 p.m., its attendees make their way into local bars and restaurants, providing an economic boost to the city’s nightlife sector. 

“First Fridays is not just an event. It’s something that takes place every month throughout the city of Oakland. Almost every bar, every restaurant has some kind of First Fridays thing going on; we’re just the main hub of it all,” McGhee said.

The city of Oakland covers some of the costs of the event’s police and fire fees, but additional funding from the city is hard to come by, she said. The city of Oakland did not respond to SFGATE’s request for comment by publication time. 

McGhee said she thinks the newly installed protected bike lanes along Telegraph Avenue have negatively impacted First Fridays’ revenue, as they removed space that was once used for vendors and event parking. “We sat on multiple city council meetings and expressed our concerns around the bike lane construction from a safety standpoint and event standpoint, but they already had it in their minds that they were going to put it in,” McGhee said.

First Fridays is held on the first Friday of every month on Telegraph Avenue between 22nd and 27th streets, and acts as a block party, gathering space and platform for small businesses and community artists. First Fridays has drawn tens of thousands of people monthly since the early 2000s. 

“The closure is unfortunate because this is helping create a platform for small businesses to be able to support their families and things like that,” McGhee said. “It’s also serving as a positive space for people to congregate and enjoy the beauty that Oakland has to offer.”