Certainly. It's been a few months since we last attended the event, and there's been a change of ownership in the interim, but we don't think that has affected the character of the event. Now in its ninth year, four senior executives from Zappo's recently privately purchased First Friday and intend to greatly expand the event and improve the shuttle service, so expect a cool monthly happening to get even better in the coming months.
For those unfamiliar with it, First Friday is a national monthly arts tradition carried on by a number of cities, including Albany, Anchorage, Augusta, Burlington, Columbus, Denver, Honolulu, Indianapolis, Juneau, Kalamazoo, Kansas City, Knoxville, LincolnLouisville, Las Vegas, Scranton, Oakland, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, Raleigh, Richmond, Rochester, San Antonio, San Jose, Santa Rosa, and Tallahassee. The event takes place, as the names suggests, on the First Friday of evey month and while its nature varies from city to city, in general it's open house at art galleries, antique stores, and so on, which will stay open late; there will be numerous vendors selling jewelry, art, crafts, food, drinks, and so on; plus, street entertainers, live music, food trucks, and a general party atmosphere inside and out.
In Las Vegas, the main hub of First Friday, which starts at 5 p.m., is around Casino Center, where there's an antique store called the Funk House whose owner, Cindy Funkhouser, was the original founder of the Las Vegas event. There are lots of antique and bric-a-brac stores in the vicinity who all take part, plus this is where you'll find the street vendors. Streets here are barricaded off for pedestrians only.
One problem with First Friday in Las Vegas is that parking's a problem, so get there early if you don't want to spend forever looking for a spot, or risk having your vehicle towed (don't take that chance -- it happens). We gather additional free parking has been added since we were last there, but we're not sure where it's located. The second "challenge" is that the downtown arts district is somewhat sprawling, rather than being confined to a single area, so you have to walk around a fair bit to enjoy it all, or else take advantage of the shuttle service. That's just a heads-up for anyone not comfortable walking too far, but don't let it put you off attending, as it's one of the most fun community events that happens in Vegas and has been growing from strength to strength.
The Arts Factory on Main Street is a secondary "hub," then once the galleries and street sellers wrap up at around 10 p.m., the party moves down to the funky bars of Fremont East, in particular the Beauty Bar, which has hosted the long-running "Get Back" party, featuring old-skool hip hop, soul, funk, reggae, and house both indoors and in the expansive back yard. It's a really fun event if you like your dance music and want to catch the local beat boys doing their thing.
For more information, including a map of where everything's at, visit the new and totally upgraded* First Friday website. If you want to be a helper, the organizers are looking for extra volunteers this month to make sure the ninth anniversary goes off with a bang, so if you'd like to earn yourself some good karma and a First Friday t-shirt, email a note to firstfridaylv@gmail and put "volunteer" in the subject line.
[*Ed: If anyone from the FF organization reads this, please bring back the old printable pdf map; the new Google map sucks! And what happened to the shuttle map?! The new site looks a lot fancier, but it's less informative than the old one...]
