Supporters Trying To Barter For Fair’s Survival Compliance With County’s Festival Ordinance May End Popular Counter-Culture Event

Blame it on Jerry Garcia or county commissioners, but the Okanogan River Barter Faire may never be the same.

Supporters of the popular counterculture encampment near Tonasket, Wash., say Okanogan County commissioners may be harder on Barter Faire than a horde of Garcia’s band groupies were last year.

After Grateful Dead band leader Jerry Garcia died last year, young “Deadheads” turned to a band called Phish. The Phishheads followed their new idols to Spokane where they were performing on Oct. 7. The Phishheads later that weekend wreaked havoc on Barter Faire, fair supporter Virginia Mazzetti said.

“We were the next party,” she said. “I can’t describe how much more trouble it was…They brought their culture to our fair and we didn’t really like it.”

Now Mazzetti and other fair supporters say county commissioners threaten to kill the encampment altogether.

Responding to neighbors’ complaints about burgeoning crowds, commissioners are considering making the twice-yearly fair comply with the county’s festival ordinance.

“It would essentially end the fair,” Mazzetti said. “We couldn’t have halogen lights every 50 feet and we don’t want the armed presence of the police. It wouldn’t be the Barter Faire. It would be any old county fair.”

When the sun goes down at Barter Faire, people who may have been busy swapping blankets for beans get out their guitars and gather around campfires. That “tribal camp” is what makes Barter Faire special, Mazzetti said.

She said organizers are planning a variety of measures, including restrictions on vehicles, to reduce attendance and restore the fair’s traditional “family” ambiance. But larger crowds would be needed to pay the $10,000 bond required by the festival ordinance, Mazzetti said.

In the past, the fair has been exempt from the law because it didn’t attract the threshold crowd of 3,000. No one keeps count, but County Commission Chairman Spence Higby said fair attendance “has grown enormously in the last couple of years and it clearly exceeded that figure last year.”

He said commissioners put the issue on their agenda Monday because people who live near the site complained about dust, noise, sanitation and other issues.

But Mazzetti said commissioners are “playing with political suicide because this fair is an extremely popular event in this county.”

Higby said most of the hundred or so people who turned out for Monday’s meeting were fair supporters.

“They claim that they don’t advertise, but they certainly do have a network,” Higby said, noting that 1,500 to 2,000 people signed letters and petitions in support of the fair.

He said commissioners may schedule a meeting next week to make their decision. Even if the fair is subject to the ordinance, there still could be a compromise, Higby said.

“The ordinance is fairly flexible and there are some things that actually can be modified or waived if they don’t fit the particular situation,” he said.

, DataTimes