Handmade and Homegrown Since 1972
The History of Comfest
By Mark J. Lucas |
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Once a year, throngs of people, numbering more than one-hundred thousand, congregate in Goodale Park to attend Comfest, one of the largest community-based, not-for-profit festivals in the country. There you will see an armada of beer tents, craft stands, food vendors, and stages which host around two hundred acts for the duration of the three-day festival. For newcomers, it appears to be an overwhelming party, but at its core, Comfest is designed to be a forum for members of the Columbus community to engage in open dialog on an array of local issues, and to foster communication about ways that we can improve our lives through community action and sustainability.
With no corporate sponsorship, and operating solely on the volunteer efforts of thousands, it is a marvel of efficiency, but to fully understand how this is accomplished, we must look back at the origins of Comfest, and see how it came be the festival that it is today.
"It was baby steps, at first," recalls Bill Finzzel, who attended the first Comfest in 1972, and would be one of its organizers in the early 1980s. "All beginnings are difficult. I happened by it more by circumstance than by plan. It was a cornucopia of different interests for people to get involved with, some of which I was familiar with, and others with which I was not."
Photo: Jeff Mills
The festival one sees today would have been all but unrecognizable at that time. Rather than occupying the expansive Goodale Park, it was situated on the boulevard between 16th Avenue and Waldeck in the OSU campus area. During a time in American history rife with the political turmoil of Vietnam and the Civil Rights Movement, it was a gathering of open-minded individuals bent on activism in celebration of community solidarity.
"This really was community oriented," recalled Reverend Burton Cantrell of the Wesley Foundation, whose church provided community organizers with facilities to operate the first Comfest. "The important thing was that someone controlled some property. That was the big thing was that the Wesley Foundation did. We provided them with our building - most importantly, our bathrooms - all day and night for the festival. It was open to about 2,000 people. That was a heck of a lot of people to get into that intersection," said Cantrell.
Security at the time was undertaken by the community leaders themselves, and according to Cantrell, "they ran it, and they ran it well." There were a handful of food vendors, craftspeople, and a stage on what made for an ideal amphitheater. By all accounts, everything ran smoothly under this model.
"We allowed the freedom of the community to work for itself." said Cantrell. "The best thing we could do is stand out of the way and let it do its thing."
"The city was quite helpful," he continued. "This was a popular idea from the beginning, except for some people who lived nearby worried about the noise, but the music stopped at around 1 a.m., so it wasn't that much of a problem. Parks and recreation was helpful, too. They provided picnic tables and portable bathrooms."
What began with a few food vendors and craftspeople eventually grew by leaps and bounds, soon overwhelming the little boulevard on which it started. The festival was then relocated to a gravel parking lot across from the Short North Tavern on High Street. It would remain there for a few years before being moved into the park, which would set a different tone for Comfest.
"It changed the event itself," said Connie Everett, member of the Grants and the Spirit and Purpose Committees. "In some ways, it became much more of a community event. There was a sense of it being a bit of a private party, before. It was like preaching to the choir, but we now have a forum to speak to the entire community, and based on the ID's at the beer booth, people from all over the world."
As of late, there has been some criticism from long-time Comfest attendees that the event has become too inundated with tourists from the suburbs just looking to get drunk and listen to music, but organizers of the event are trying to recapture, with a renewed vigor, the original intent of the festival: to act as a voice for political and social change.
"The original Comfests were political," continued Everett. "There was nothing about them that wasn't political. Community is what we're all about. Friday will be focused on political issues, Saturday will focus on sustainability, and Sunday will focus on how the average person can get involved."
One of the most impressive aspects of Comfest is that, although it brings in thousands of dollars in revenue from beer and merchandise sales, no profit is kept, whatsoever. A portion of the money is used to carry out the event, covering things such as permit costs, police cordon of the streets, and waste disposal. The remainder of the money is issued to various causes throughout the city.
Photo: Jeff Mills
"We don't sell beer to get people drunk," said Everett. "We do it to provide grants to community organizations that share our vision of a better world."
Though it does have the added bonus of getting people drunk, it certainly does fund quite a bit of charity work. The Grants Committee is charged with the task of collecting and distributing thousands of dollars for the benefit of Columbus's citizens.
"We have up to $10,000 per year, which goes to non-profit groups," said Paul Painter, member of the Entertainment and Grants Committees and seven-year veteran of the volunteer effort. "Those would be 501c3-type organizations. This is generated from the sale of beer, koozies, cups, and T-shirts."
Among the organizations that have received this money are the Ohio Environmental Council, the Third-Hand Bicycle Co-op, the University Area Enrichment Association, and Simply Living of Central Ohio, an organization that educates local individuals and groups about sustainable living.
One Comfest concept that has grown considerably in the past few years is the Solar Stage. Located in the northwest corner of the park, the stage is completely 'off the grid.' Powered entirely by a trailer equipped with solar collection cells, it run various amplifiers and PA equipment directly during the day, while simultaneously charging batteries that kick in after the sun goes down. Begun by Tim Chavez, it was originally a solar tent at the fringe of the festival.
"I wanted to set up a solar tent at Comfest to showcase workshops on sustainability, energy systems, recycling, and sustainable building," says Chavez. "It's grown in attendance steadily, and now presents acoustic and Appalachian music, too. I think it's a positive thing, because it allows community organizers to see what progress has been made [toward sustainability] in the past year."
Even if it is founded on serious political principles, one cannot deny that Comfest is also a serious source of fun in the sun. It is, after all, a celebration of the community in which we live, but as many of its organizers will tell you, it is a party with a purpose. Even the bands which sign up for the event are looked at with a watchful eye, and one of the components that helps the Entertainment Committee decide who will get to play is consideration of which bands have given back. The greater the contribution to the city, in terms of volunteering and the like, the greater the chances they will take the stage. It is a point of conscience found in every corner of the festival.
"[Comfest] has made Columbus a stronger, more peaceful community," says Chavez. "Being from Arizona, originally, I get to see it with a little different perspective. It's just such a wonderful event. I've never seen anything like it."
Comfest has come a long way from its humble beginnings. What was once just a boulevard full of activists with a church for a headquarters now beckons nearly ten percent of our entire city's population to its largest metropolitan park, and the numbers have grown consistently each year. The original organizers of the event probably couldn't have imagined the impact they would have, and I'm sorry to say that many of them have passed. On Sunday, when the fun is over, most will pack up and leave, with no idea who got this shindig going so many years ago, or why, but that would be beside the point. The original intent was to bring people in the community together to celebrate peace and solidarity, and that is just what happens every year.
Originally Published: June 1, 2009
