Last Saturday marked the third time the Hester Street Fair played host to the Girl Power Fair. Partnering with the Lower East Side Girl’s Club of New York, the fair included workshops working to define girl power, self-defense classes, DJing lessons, female-owned vendors, live music, and tons more.
We had the honor of hosting an event built upon the theme of “Girl Power”, and, more than appropriately, let Venus take the reigns, with her self-curated circle of female forces, which was presented alongside our own collaboration with Cleo Wade, the revolutionary writer who made major waves in media culture in channeled the chaos of our current political climate via powerful poetry that has been a perfectly apt match to fit and fuel forward movement for today’s Millennial angst. Wade set up a booth at our fair, beside the entrance, titled, “ARE YOU OK?” which, within seconds, had acquired a line of active fans, fervently awaiting Wade to give them her undoubtedly galvanizing advice.
Today, “Girl Power”, honestly, feels like a fluff-filled term. And in close pursuit, we too often find its cousin, “diversity”, an undeniably important concept that has similarly been drained of meaning by way of neon pink-shirts sported by the Kardashians which market a form of “politics” that has strayed far from its original intention.
But, despite this unfortunate societal truth, there exists a unique underground community of creatives who are currently changing the actuality of it all. And (thankfully) upon attempting to acquire the most applicable adjective to attach to these modern radicals has speedily shifted from “underground”, to “realized”.
At the helm, we have the major maven of change, Venus X, who is, and has been, revitalizing New York City’s top-tier creative cool-kid scene through her multimedia work, which spans from DJing to retail, as well as working alongside major brands such as Gucci and Nike. Formerly a neighbor to the fair for some time, having had the storefront of Planet X, the retail realization of her heralded project GHE20 G0TH1K, around the corner on Canal Street, Venus helped us coordinate an event that evoked the essence of the community that is at the core of what has come to be Hester Street Fair, as well as working to invite women who are equally community-oriented, though have taken this idea to new heights.
Our female strength statement of a Saturday started with a stimulating set: the DJ-ing debut of the illustrious Lower East Side Girls’ Club— as well as a performance by Jennifer Vanilla, and an unforgettable panel discussion (which was definitely an embarrassing tear-jerker— curated by Venus X, featuring Angela Dimayuga (Chef & Creative Director of Food and Culture, Standard Hotels), Shaniqwa Jarvis (Photographer), Maluca (Recording Artists) and Jessica Gonsalves (Co-Owner, Procell)— all of which was only to be followed by an amazing, FOMO-inducing, ‘DJ 101’ lesson with no other than the famed Uniiqu3, Juliana Huxtable and Venus X herself.
Alongside the performances and activities, the fair featured a self-defense class, a nail pop-up with MP Nails, and an array of booths which sold more than well-suited entities to the empowering essence of the entire day’s event.
While the women who were ultimately included in the inspiring day that occurred last weekend have been working well beyond the typical arena of “street fair”, they have all offered the area, and the artistic and commercial industries at large, something that fits snugly with the statement the fair has formulated at its heart for its entire existence.
Thus, until next year, and whatever spurring sentiment our 2019 girls will give you— check out the gallery from last Saturday, to live vicariously through our Girl Power trip with Venus and all of the wonderful, weird, wild women who pulled off a day at Hester Street that did more than what anyone could have ever hoped, or prepared for.
