Warm Weather, 47 Acts Helped Attract Crowds

By JIM KEVLIN


For Mark Drnek, the highpoint of Imagine Oneonta! First Night was “that Oneonta had one.  Not a whole lot of communities did.  And we’re just a small city.”
But there were many other highpoints, including the return of the 12-foot-tall puppets, once a staple of Oneonta parades; the thousands who lined Main Street; the 47 performers and 100 performances at stages around the downtown New Year’s Eve evening; and, yes, even temperatures in the high 40s, unheard of around here at this time of year.
“In terms of sheer volume and diversity, it was bigger than 2000,” said Drnek.  That was the grandmommy of all First Nights, the night when the new century was welcomed in.
Although the tally was still mounting at mid-week, Drnek estimated between 2,000 and 2,300 buttons had been sold.  At $10 apiece, $15 since Christmas, that means the final tally will be in the $20,000 to $35,000 range, plus sponsorships.
“We’ll just about break even this year,” he predicted.  While 2000 actually made about $8,000, this year’s take was pretty good, given the three-year hiatus that caused First Night’s 501c3 status to lapse, delaying fundraising.
If Drnek is considered the granddaddy of First Night Oneonta, he had plenty of brothers and sisters.  Lynn Westcott, then UCCCA director, Jim Koury, Nancy Burnett and Bobbi Harlem were on the team that worked on the first event in 1998.
At the end of 1997, Drnek had recently finished up as Oneonta’s downtown task force coordinator when he spent New Year’s Eve in Baltimore, which had First Night activities.
Drnek liked what he saw, came home and got started. After the program lapsed in 2008 – “It’s a tough thing to run,” Drnek said – people wouldn’t let him close the door.
“A lot of people look at my face and associate it with a number of different things,” he said, “but one of them is First Night.  People kept asking, are you going to do it, are you going to do it, are you going to do it?”
And so, beginning a year ago December, Drnek held a couple of meetings to gauge the interest.  He soon  had a committed corps.
Pam Strother handled Venues, finding space for acts that ranged from Indonesian traditional dancing to salsa, then made sure there was sufficient power, decorations, food.
Katherine Bashaw, Tom Clemow and Drnek collaborated on Finance, but the 501c3 renewal didn’t come through until late fall.  Rich Murphy, the county representative, did Logistics.  Alderman Paul Robinson “was our button guy, and that’s not a small thing, either,” particularly given the need to trust someone with cash.  “He’d be walking around with pounds of $1 bills.”
Valerie Adams coordinated the volunteers – the more the better.  And David Hayes, downtown coordinator, organized the parade.

Jim Kevlin/HOMETOWN ONEONTA
Jessie Baker of Greg Lee’s Cosmic Karma Fire wows the crowd along Main Street during the Imagine Oneonta! parade.

look in PICTURES to see more from Oneonta's First night!