Festival was first held in 1970, inspired by the installation of
Alexander Calder's
La Grande Vitesse previous year, featuring two stages and a few food booths. The event grew quickly, filling the Vandenberg Plaza by the 1980s, and subsequently expanding into nearby streets, with several performance stages, and more than two dozen food booths. The public event was temporarily suspended in 2020 due to the
COVID-19 pandemic, replaced with a virtual event. Festival returned to a free, public live event by 2021. In 2022, one person was killed and three others injured in an early morning shooting at Festival. On February 8, 2025, the event's organizers announced in a
Facebook post that the Festival would cease operations. The Festival had run for 55 years. == References ==