Robert Frost once opined that good fences make good neighbors. He wasn't just musing about stone walls, but the clearly drawn lines often needed to mend disparate human interests in close quarters. Now two churches and the Historic Germantown Nashville association are about to find out if invisible fences will do the trick.
They've just split Oktoberfest into two separate festivals. At issue are ideals as old as time itself: tradition vs. progress, community vs. commerce.
Now in its 29th year, Oktoberfest has become an annual destination for tens of thousands of beer-and-bratwurst-loving Nashvillians curious to imbibe and congregate in the autumnal district with a Christmas village's coziness.
For nearly a quarter-century, the Assumption Church and the Monroe Street United Methodist Church organized Oktoberfest alone. Nearly eight years ago, the neighborhood association was asked to join because "it was about to die then," says HGN president Stacy Mosley. "The churches were fighting and couldn't agree on things, and we were asked to come in as a kind of liaison."
Everything was hunky-dory until HGN found itself stuck with the lion's share of the work, but only one-third of the profits. So this year, HGN is breaking away. One festival will become two.
Oktoberfest remains. But the new Germantown Street Festival debuts on the same day, at the same time, right next door. It's the equivalent of a Wal-Mart Supercenter opening up next to Food Lion.
Don't call it a feud—it's really a split over what community means. For HGN, it's a continuation of the last 20 years, which saw Germantown transformed from a dilapidated 18 blocks to an amber-lit neighborhood of meticulously preserved Victorians. In the glint of Oktoberfest's dollar signs, HGN saw new sidewalks, lampposts and distinctive street signs to add the finishing touch to gentrification.
The two churches, meanwhile, sustain a decidedly old-school take. They just want a reason to bring former residents back for a beer and a chat about old times. Both parties are too polite to call it a rift.
So a few weeks ago, they issued dueling press releases about the popular second Saturday in Germantown. The first announced that Oct. 11 would be devoted, as usual, to the annual celebration of German arts, crafts, brews and delectables.
With a sweet, grandfatherly tone, Assumption and Monroe Street United offered up the usual brewskies, crafts and kids' stuff, plus worship and the reuniting of old friends. The benefits would go to outreach programs for the poor.
Meanwhile, HGN circulated its own release, this one trumpeting the new Germantown Street Festival, which would "focus on the unique historic character of Nashville's oldest ethnic neighborhood and showcase the diverse cultural population that is defining its redevelopment."
In other words: Lookout, Oktoberfest, there's a new sheriff in town.
Yet that "diverse cultural population" is more commonly known as yuppies, leading to a collision that can't help but seem unbecoming. Jettisoning aging congregations in the name of prettier street lights doesn't exactly have an earnest ring to it.
HGN followed with a separate letter to residents only, assuring them that "no one has been operating in secret" and thanking them for "enduring the rumors."
Those rumors were that Oktoberfest was stuck.
With some 30,000 attendants annually, the fest stands to be a cash cow, the kind of fund-raising source few neighborhoods can claim. But while HGN had used its energy and savvy to build a robotic milking machine, the churches pulled up with wooden buckets. So HGN took its ingenuity and split.
While both festivals draw on Oktoberfest's traditional aesthetic, HGN took with it the more profitable elements, such as the Paulaner 5k race and the tour of historic homes.
The two festivals will now operate right next to each other, intersecting at Fifth and Monroe.
But a festival's a festival, right? To your left might be a clown entertaining children (Oktoberfest), while just up yonder there's a free train ride (HGN.) Stroll a little this way and hear German music (Oktoberfest), or that-a-way for jazz (HGN.) Because the events will all bleed together, most folks won't be able to tell the difference.
But HGN and the two churches will.
"Basically, the only difference is that the neighborhood will get all the money for the race instead of splitting it [with the churches]," HGN's Mosley explains. "We'll continue to get the proceeds for the homes' tour. The two churches will split their food and beverage proceeds, and we'll keep our food and beverage proceeds. So it's basically just a larger festival."
Which is better than no festival at all.
HGN spent the first four years of its eight-year participation chairing the event. But when the two churches took over during the last three years, profits declined. They didn't have the salesmanship and hustle needed to bring in adequate sponsors and vendors.
So when HGN resumed leadership this year, it asked for a split based on contribution.
"The Methodist Church and the Catholic Church said they didn't think they were going to move ahead with the festival, because it had become too large and they felt it was overwhelming," Mosley says.
Their solution? Scale it back or call the whole thing off.
Mosley balked.
"Everybody comes no matter what," she says. "We did no advertising last year and had over 30,000 people show up. Everyone knows the second Saturday in October is Oktoberfest."
When they met again, the churches said they were done with the festival, says Mosley. So HGN offered to manage the entire ordeal, phasing the churches out over three years.
Both initially agreed. Then Assumption decided to hold its own fest on church grounds. "So we just agreed we would both proceed in different directions," says Mosley.
As HGN looks to secure sponsorships for three music stages and a wine garden, Oktoberfest, with its pony rides and inflatable castle, looks more like a quaint relic of a bygone era. Both sides insist there's no bad blood, but as HGN chugs ahead, and the churches stay put, it's hard not to picture an attractive couple in a convertible peeling past a dusty church van with a nonchalant wave.
Not so, says Mosley.
"We know the asset we have of the churches being in the neighborhood. They help make the neighborhood what we are. And we don't want to cut them out. We're working together. We're sharing information. It's just that we could not continue with our partnership."
Running the show themselves, and attracting more visitors, is the only way to reach their goals. But the churches simply want to celebrate a more literal-minded definition of community.
"Oktoberfest was always a homecoming for the people who used to live in Germantown and North Nashville, and a homecoming for the two churches," says Jerry Strobel, who's handling publicity for Oktoberfest. "It was never designed to really make a huge profit. You of course want to pay your bills. But it was more of a celebration for the people who had lived in Germantown."
After 29 years, the ratio of people who lived in Germantown to those who now call it home has tilted increasingly toward the upwardly mobile. So it's kraut with the old, thin with the new.
