For the last year, Main and Market Streets, along with inside the stores, can be full of vendors showing off their talents, handmade jewelry, artistic abilities, live music, food, and more on First Fridays. The dream of Brewskis Coffee and Bar owners, Kim Kus and Mayor Justin Hummel, is to tie the community and students together with this in-town attraction at the start of each month.
Dr. Luke Haile, associate professor of exercise science at the Bloomsburg campus, approached the coffee bar with the initiative to promote a community-based event for more people to get involved together. The professor runs his own vintage apparel shop called Luke Haile Vintage (@lukehailevintage). Haile and the coffee bar owners then coordinated business meetings with the Downtown Bloomsburg Inc. (@dbi_downtownbloomsburginc) to coordinate First Friday events.
“We initiated it,” says Kim Kus. She shared that their coffee bar began hosting small First Fridays of their own. Then, it was time to expand to a town-wide event from 5-8 p.m. “The first year was the building year,” says Kus. DBI used to primarily focus on Main Street from west to east. Now, the summer goal is to promote further and grow across the town with other businesses involved on East Street, Market Street, and past DBI borders.
Now the event has expanded, and there are bigger plans for the future with warmer weather. Hummel shares that the vibe will be more relaxed and that there will be added participation from the local fire department. He says the event is mainly “vendor-driven,” and Kim elaborates on how it is non-profit with no need for a vendor fee for now in the building stages.
Another goal is to gain more attention from local students. Kus mentions that student organizations can use the opportunity to do outreach at First Friday. This would connect on-campus students more with off-campus businesses. The April event is anticipated to bring the vendors outside into the streets for the warm weather.
