SACRAMENTO, Calif. — A fun, free, family-friendly festival will pop back up on R Street this month, and organizers have expanded it and improved crowd flow.
The Our Street Night Market is the passion project of three friends and business partners. ABC10 chatted with two of them – Shawn Kahan and Curtis Currier – about their upcoming event, which will take place from 7 p.m. to 1 a.m. starting Saturday, June 22, on R Street between 11th and 14th streets.
It seems R Street's always got something going on. That's why Kahan and Currier love this area.
They live in the Warehouse Artist Lofts, which offers affordable housing for artists. That was the brainchild of Sacramento developer Ali Youssefi, who died of cancer last year when he was only 35 years old.
"You know, he built this place, and his vision was that, 'If you make it easier for artists to make ends meet, you know, they can spend more of their time making the city a more beautiful place,'" Kahan told ABC10.
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Youseffi’s vision inspired them to start the Our Street Night Market. It's a street fair with food trucks, artists and attractions like an outdoor arcade and silent disco.
The first one was in June 2018.
"We were hoping, like, it'd be really cool if 2,000 - 2,500 people would show up. We had about 12,000 for the first one,” Currier recalls. “So we were like, 'Okay, let's do it again. Let's tighten some things up, try it again and we'll be ready for that,' and we had about 30,000 the second one."
That was in August, and it was crowded. Too crowded. Food truck lines spilled right across the flow of traffic.
"We wanted it to be really authentic to what night markets are, where the streets are lined with food vendors,” Kahan explained. “However, with long lines, it really didn't work out for this footprint."
Our Street Night Market received complaints from people on social media.
"As... three individuals doing this as a passion project... we really took an entire year to really think this through and retool this and... work with a bigger team, more people, and try to scale this thing," Kahan said.
Kahan said food vendors will be set up like a food court in a nearby parking lot for this upcoming Night Market. Plus, the festival space will be bigger.
"We're extending it another block down and then we actually are using the entire SEIU parking lot,” Currier said, adding that amounted to "three times the space this year."
They don't know how many people will come on Saturday, but the changes should help with crowding.
"That's kind of what we've done, right? Is mature this thing to the point where it can be sustainable and be a place where, yes, it's dense, but it's still enjoyable and you're still meeting people and you're still having those moments,” Kahan said. “But it's still comfortable and you still feel like you can move around and make your way and have a good night out in Sacramento."
He and Currier co-own the Yellow Brick Group, a marketing agency they started. A Yellow Brick Group colleague is also co-organizer of Our Street Market.
"Sacramento wants big ideas and they want to participate, clearly,” Kahan said.
The next Our Street Night Market is Saturday, June 22, from 7 p.m. to 1 a.m., along R Street from 11th to 14th streets. It will have more than 40 food vendors, which is more than double the amount of food trucks from last year.
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