2012… The year the World didn’t End

The PROGRESS Label calendar year was forced to take a backseat to the busy happenings at Offbeat Press, however we still had a very good year. Our intern, Bridgette stuck with us for 2012 and represented PROGRESS at a variety of events across Wisconsin and the Midwest.

Our 2012 event schedule included educational, promo events as well as our conventional Midwest street fairs and Wisconsin street festivals. Our first weekend event of 2012 was at the University of Wisconsin United Council Conference on Sustainability in LaCrosse. This same weekend in the dead of February we also attended the MOSES Midwest Organic Farming Conference in LaCrosse. Over Earth week, we went down to the Green Metropolis Fair in Chicago, IL and enjoyed the show their, meeting some good people at Distant Village and other Chicago area Green Businesses.

Our busy festival vending season began in mid May with the Oshkosh Sustainability Expo in Oshkosh at the Winnebago County Fairgrounds. This was the first of 3 sustainability related events that Healthy Living Events put together in 2012 and both Offbeat and Progress attended the show along with many of our favorite green businesses and Oshkosh area organic farmers, including Boerson Farm and Fraser Farms. We attended the second annual Fighting Bob Fest North in River Falls, WI. As hard as they try, this step-brother festival is nothing compared to the original end of summer political festival in Madison, Fighting Bob Fest. It was nice to get some real politics amongst the beginning of the campaign explosion and the following day in mid May we were at one of our favorite festivals in Madison, WI. The WORT Block Party is always a great event in Madison. WORT is one of the best small events that we are part of. Maggie and our friends at WORT put on a great and free live music event. The event raises funds for WORT radio, with their great beer, No Crap on Tap. This event features some of the best beers that Madison area breweries have to offer. Whether you prefer an chocolate imperial stout, or a super-hoppy, triple IPA, you can find them at the WORT Block Party alongside some great live music.

Memorial Day weekend, had PROGRESS running for the mountains and visiting a great friend and former cohort, Angelica. For the second year in a row, we made a great road trip to the Rockies. Memorial Day weekend in  both 2011 and 2012  had PROGRESS at the Boulder Creek Festival amongst the hundreds of vendors, and the same weekend as BolderBOULDER, which is a big deal in the marathon world. Our road trip to Colorado spanned 10 days, so we work the weekends and vacation in Colorado during the week. The vacation part of the trip included a few nights camping at Rocky Mountain National Park followed by some good art viewing. We hung with some moose and went on some beautiful mountain hikes

RoaringRiver_sketch

Drawn while sitting on a boulder in the Roaring River, near Bighorn Mountain inside Rocky Mountain National Park.

Rockies

We took part in an interactive art show at the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art – BMoCA and if we find the videos, we’ll put those up here. After mall-walking the Rockies, we returned to Denver to stay with friends and take in some Denver summer love and art. We saw the end of the John Vogl, aka The Bungaloo, screen printed poster show at the Super Ordinary Gallery. We met  owner Tron to see the Vogl show and she set us up with an afternoon of good art in Five Points, before we ran off to meet friends and the crowds at Denver First Friday art night on Santa Fe. There’s always some good stuff tucked within the conventional fine art, but the Black Book Gallery had the most to offer. We saw some original Evan Hecox and Ravi Zupa screen prints. It was great to see some work by such amazing illustrators.

We stayed in the Capital Hill area and vended at the Capital Hill People’s Fair on Saturday and Sunday. The People’s Fair is a great art and craft event in the heart of Denver at Civic Center Park. The Capital Hill People’s Fair is a great event for PROGRESS in the heart of Denver. There’s tons of good music and our friend and Wisco-native John Statz played on Saturday afternoon so the ladies caught that show while I was slingin shirts. The People’s Fair is one of the few juried events that we participate in and since PROGRESS won “Best-of Show” in 2011, they didn’t let us participate in 2012. Either way this event is worth the trip to Denver by itself and we look forward to making the trip back there. Our last night in Denver we took our host out to the “hippest” new eatery in the Denver area. Linger Restaurant in the Highlands was a great event with a well-curated interior, tasty morsels, a good story, and a pretty rad event all around. We also had some tasty eats at Solera and our favorite Denver diner, City o City. A knows her food, and our taste palettes love the experience.

VoglPosters

The rest of the 2012 summer events included a number of Milwaukee events including Locust Street Festival, Brady Street Festival and Center Street Daze. Milwaukee is always a blast in the summer, the events are great and there’s a party on every corner. We were able to catch up with friends at Peace Action WI, Newaukee, Radio MilwaukeeMilwaukee Pride, Exclusive Company, and True Skool, amongst others.

The Willy Street Fair and Fighting Bob Fest were great events again in 2012, but Drew was in Orcas Island Washington for the wedding of good friends and the creators of Corbé Company.

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