By Kevin Lee Associate Editor

“I went down to the restaurant and dragged him out of there,” she said. “I wanted him to see the number of people on the street.”

The grabber was Chris Barraza, project manager for the Neighborhoods and Community Services Department of the City of Mobile, formerly known as Main Street Mobile. The “grabbee” was Chakli Diggs, owner of NoJa, the trendiest bistro in downtown.

Diggs’ reaction? ‘He was shocked,” said Barraza. “He just said, ‘Look at this! It’s like a real city!’ He’s all excited about it now and is trying to drag friends from West Mobile down here.”

The event? The monthly Loda ArtWalks that have become quite the rage for citizens east of I-65.

In some towns they’re called gallery hops or gallery strolls or any number of similar monikers that signify cooperation between artistic showplaces. The coordinated parties lend extra heft to monthly exhibition premieres and stir a contagious and rapturous gestalt.

Pre-Katrina New Orleans had wonderfully synergistic affairs that encompassed a panoply of venues throughout the arts district orbiting Julia Street.

Even little Fairhope on the Eastern Shore is in the game and has seen jostling crowds at their First Friday Art Walks for at least the last half decade.

Extensive coercion was unneeded to convince Barraza. “I’m from Philadelphia and we saw what it did up there,” she said. “We knew it could work.”

There was a tipping point, though. “Arts Alive was a big part of it,” Barraza explained. The outdoor arts festival first staged in the fall of 2003 was a tentative step into further establishment of the Cathedral Square arts district. The unprecedented success of those first Arts Alive events revealed a potential market.

Other business owners forged ahead. “Chesser (Gallery) started opening up with Space 301 openings and drew more people down here,” Barraza said. “Then the Arts Council move was a big catalyst, when they moved down to street level, and they have such a great space with the Skinny Gallery. There was just such a great synergy happening.”

“We wanted to recreate Arts Alive,” she admitted. In the spring of 2005, plans emerged for the monthly open house.

Barraza has been pleased thus far. “I’d say it has met it goals,” she said. “The first one in July of ‘05 had about 250 people there and we’ve gotten about a 100-150 person bump every few months.”

Barraza said the ArtWalk on the second Friday of each month is currently averaging about 600-650 attendees per event.

The Arts Council recently counted more than 700 visitors through their doors at one ArtWalk this past winter. Some claim the event in September of ‘06 saw close to a thousand attendees, no doubt boosted by the council’s annual awards ceremony that evening.

Barraza feels the exact amount of success has escaped some beneficiaries. “We’re about to institute a system to help people keep better count of visitors,” she said. “Linda Hall from Cathedral Square Gallery told us after this last one, ‘Oh, my God we had a such a great night. We had about 300 people there.’ And I told her, ‘No, you had a lot more than that,’ because we knew from the count at other places there were twice that number of people down there.”

Barraza isn’t the only one noticing the groundswell. “We’ve seen the effect in the sheer numbers of people that come through the Skinny Gallery everyday,” said Charlie Smoke, Director of Community Development for the Mobile Arts Council. “The word of mouth about the event and the venues seems to be increasing. I’m hearing through the grapevine about people who talk about their experiences down here.”

“I’ve also noticed the number of new faces we’re seeing every month,” Smoke added. “The trick to it all is getting them to come back. The audience is out there, we just have to reach them.”

Smoke is a longtime member of the Mobile cultural scene, involved in various arenas of the area arts backdrop for decades. He thinks the monthly events hold an accessibility sometimes absent. “I think the ArtWalks are less imposing than openings of solo artists,” he said. “People seem to be more comfortable at these, for whatever reason.”

And the economic engine is already starting to warm. “Cathedral Square gallery is very enthusiastic,” Smoke said. “They’ve had really strong sales. And Chesser is starting to sell more and more every month.”

Privy to Port City predilections, Smoke realizes other factors at play. “Of course, a major part of it is the social factor,” he admitted. “Mobilians love a party.”

A side result is the number of residents grown comfortable with wandering downtown streets once again. “We’ve been pleased with the diversity of the crowds,” Smoke noted. “You’re seeing people down here who weren’t coming downtown a few years ago.”

Perhaps the most promising sign for Barraza was something superficially underwhelming. “We had about 350 for ArtWalk in February,” she boasted. Why the excitement? The ArtWalk was held in the middle of a Mardi Gras parade.

And that’s certainly a benchmark for an old town that often begrudgingly faces new paths.

Kevin Lee is Lagniappe associate editor. Contact him at klee@lagniappemobile.com.

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