Graham mayor Jennifer Talley has been a consistent advocate for restoring the Arts Around the Square street festival that was a popular annual event in Graham for 25 years but ended in 2002.
Originally sponsored by the Alamance Arts Council as a fundraiser for the group, Talley and the city council have now brought the re-established concept under the city’s domain, with the first, newest version of the event scheduled for Saturday, May 17.
Unfortunately, this week Talley also provided the key vote that may well undermine the very success of the festival she’s championed.
She provided the pivotal third vote when the council voted, 3-2, to allow four beer and wine vendors to set up booths at the upcoming arts festival.
Councilman Joey Parsons was the most insightful and succinct in expressing what we believe to be the overwhelming sentiment among Graham residents: “I don’t think it should be there at all. It’s a family event, and I don’t see where alcohol has anything to do with [an] arts festival.”
Indeed.
Unfortunately, the council majority chose alcohol over keeping the family-oriented atmosphere of what had been for decades Graham’s signature event.
Everyone from Talley (who emphasized she, herself, doesn’t drink alcohol) to the beer vendors insisted that all drinkers would be on good behavior, but from our observation over time, the chances of misbehavior among beer drinkers is usually quite high.
We simply do not understand the seemingly endless attraction to expanding the availability and visibility of alcoholic beverages among local municipalities.
And the fact that “everybody’s doing it” is of little to no consolation.
Graham, for instance, already has at least a half-dozen bars (or craft breweries, to use their newest term) and other ABC permit holders that sell various alcoholic beverages within just a few blocks around the Historic Court House.
And one of those owners suggested this week that Graham join the social drinking district craze. More to come on that at next month’s city council meeting.
We’ve warned before, Graham and other small towns are only a few more bars away from becoming like Pottersville from the nightmarish section of It’s a Wonderful Life movie of 1946 starring Jimmy Stewart.
A lovely little fictional small town, Bedford Falls, much like Graham, is transformed by the wrong leadership – the villain, Henry Potter – into a den of sin and inequity with speakeasies, gambling, and other vices in the center of town.
We hate that Talley, Whitaker, and Chin put Graham on that path this week and all the more to have done so in connection with what was the promising rebirth of a wonderful, family-friendly arts festival.
