I walked around tonight with my cousin's grandfather, who is maybe 75-80.  He complained that "there was no theme".  My mom said of the canoes "that looks like something my preschoolers would do".  My aunt complained that "they need music or something".  Some girl randomly hit on my dad

 

This artwork was all super weak.  Reminded me, at best, of COSI.  Mostly it was just the digital equivalent of making pilgrim hats out of construction paper.     

 

 

5 hours ago, jmecklenborg said:

I walked around tonight with my cousin's grandfather, who is maybe 75-80.  He complained that "there was no theme".  My mom said of the canoes "that looks like something my preschoolers would do".  My aunt complained that "they need music or something".  Some girl randomly hit on my dad

 

This artwork was all super weak.  Reminded me, at best, of COSI.  Mostly it was just the digital equivalent of making pilgrim hats out of construction paper.     

 

 

 

The artwork is like 1/3 of the experience. The interactive pieces and the random related blink pop up parties/events are about 66 percent of the experience. 

 

You have to imagine blink as a walkable downtown art gallery, rather than this in your face Lazer art show hosted as the us bank arena. 

 

Also not sure how much you truly saw last night since most of the projections were turned off last night because of the rain/lightning in the area. 

I heard from an employee of Jeff Ruby's Steakhouse that the restaurant was totally dead on Friday night - "the band was playing to four people in the cocktail lounge".  Thanks, Blink. 

Had a pretty bad Blink experience yesterday. Got to the Banks around sundown and walked across the bridge to Covington and all the way down to Pike. None of the projections were operating because of weather reasons even though it wasn’t raining and had only been lightly raining. Went back across the bridge, all pedestrian traffic was confined to the sidewalk and slowed to a standstill. Very claustrophobic. A couple of time got stuck under the loudspeakers, incredibly loud, just as they were playing the portion of the soundtrack that was industrial “bridge noise.” Had to protect the ears of my baby. Went up towards fountain square and it really started to rain. Got home and read the article about how they thought it would be safer to get everyone off the bridge deck and onto the sidewalk. (I do wonder about the exact nature of the issue keeping people off the deck because the sidewalks were terrible, I hope it’s not just because they wanted to keep the low capacity golf carts running) 

Edited October 12, 20195 yr by thebillshark

Who pays for blink and how much does it cost?

https://www.wcpo.com/news/local-news/blink-festival-draws-to-a-close-but-organizers-still-look-to-the-future

 

1.5 million projected attendance for Blink 2019!

 

Organizers are looking towards 2021 and are most likely seeking public funding. 

One common complaint I have been hearing from folks who attended this year as well as the original in 2017 is that things seemed a lot more spread out this year.   Appears like they spread the entire event out way more than they needed to at this point in the game.   

 

The best improvements that I noticed vs the 2017 event is shutting down the streets to vehicular traffic.  The streetcars appeared to flow a lot better with the police escorts as well even though the system was at max capacity all night every night.   Their appeared to be more vendors selling stuff but still not enough in my opinion.

 

All in all, I witnessed all different types of folks generally having a very good time.   It is a sight to see that many people walking the streets.   Octoberfest and Taste Of Cincy don't even compare IMO.   I'm sure with each event and year that passes, they with learn new ways to make it better and flow easier in the future.

Edited October 14, 20195 yr by oakiehigh

Interesting, I'm of the other opinion.

 

I went down last night hoping the crowds would be a little bit smaller and it was jam-packed.  I'm glad they expanded it to Covington this year, but they need to continue to expand it and spread out the mass of people, because crowds that large can really put a damper on the whole thing. 

 

Expand it around the FCC stadium and into Newport as well in 2021. Close more streets, allowing spillover into the streets was the definitely much better for crowd control.   Have SORTA charter specific one-time routes for BLINK as well.  I'm not sure how well the park and ride idea on existing routes worked.

Edited October 14, 20195 yr by 10albersa

On 10/12/2019 at 2:07 AM, jmecklenborg said:

I walked around tonight with my cousin's grandfather, who is maybe 75-80.  He complained that "there was no theme".  My mom said of the canoes "that looks like something my preschoolers would do".  My aunt complained that "they need music or something".  Some girl randomly hit on my dad

 

This artwork was all super weak.  Reminded me, at best, of COSI.  Mostly it was just the digital equivalent of making pilgrim hats out of construction paper.     

 

 

 

This really goes a long way to explain your constant pessimism. It seems to run in the family ?

I have mixed feelings about Blink this year. The streetcar was much more efficient. They did a solid job of keeping it moving, but it still appeared to bunch up some. The police escorts seemed to be going slower than necessary, but I understand it's difficult to anticipate pedestrian movement when there are so many people and they aren't paying attention to their surroundings.

 

The installations seems to be a lot more spread out - especially in the OTR area. Memorial Hall seems to be an exact replica of 2017's exhibit, and there wasn't a critical mass of installations on Pleasant Street like in the past. That was the highlight of Blink 2017 for me. You could really just wander around and run into a bunch of stuff without looking at a map. This year a map seemed like a requirement.

 

Covington had a good collection of projections and was probably the highlight of the official displays for me. The projections usually played with the architecture of the buildings, which didn't seem to happen as much in OTR or Downtown.

 

My favorite thing was just seeing that many people downtown at once. It was surreal seeing that many people downtown.

 

Once again, though, the bridge can't handle that many people along the main decks. They had to cut it off from pedestrians. We can't even run a single large bus on that bridge, it isn't equipped to handle that much load. For reference: parking garages are rated for lower loads than office buildings, residential units, and assembly spaces. With the bridge fully loaded with pedestrians it could very possibly have a critical failure. I agree they needed some more solutions for crossing into Covington, though. People were talking about ferries shuttling people across. It wouldn't be a bad idea if they did that IMO.

 

Hopefully they either shrink the footprint in 2021 and keep the same number of installations, or they add more installations and maintain a similar footprint. 

I was really excited to have Covington brought into Blink but was dissapointed at how hard it was to actually get there. The bridge was nearly impassable and the way the lights were laid out you couldn't really see it or hear it from the Covington side at all. 

 

Overall it's an awesome event and does a great job of getting people to walk around in neighborhoods they may have never visited otherwise and helps change the perception of Cincinnati. I agree on the comment that the density of installations was a little too thin in OTR which made it lose that 'wandering through the streets' feeling of 2017 (or Midpoint Music Festival before it) and made people rely on the maps/app to navigate. 

Having worked both behind the scenes and volunteering up front two years ago and this year. I definitely heard alot more complaining from people this year. Its a shame that people have to be so down right rude and hostile.

 

I had on three separate occasions Friday of people demanding myself/Artswave reimburse them for the parking fee, since the light projections were off because of weather. My response was, " Sorry, but this is a free event, and its heavily relied upon by the weather. Your best bet is to use it as a tax right off, since we are a non-profit"  

 

I also heard people constantly saying, "this is it?" "My kid can do this on their screensaver" "I was not expecting to have to walk to every installation"  " I am not riding that silly choo choo". 

 

Beyond that the event grew in size, definitely some bumps and bruises, with any growing pains. I think there will be alot of lessons learned, and improvements for the next event in two years.  Still enjoy seeing the multitude of people walking around downtown, and seeing all the kids light up at each display. Hands down best projection this year was Cincinnatus Temple. 

Edited October 14, 20195 yr by savadams13

I agree with most of the sentiments already expressed - it was fun, but lost a bit of the magic from two years ago. Maybe that was due more to expectations than anything, but I agree that there was a feeling of being too spread out. I still thoroughly enjoyed it though, and the street closures made it really easy to zip around on a bike.

 

One thought I had that might be cool for the next iteration would be to utilize some of the skyscrapers, especially the older ones like Carew and Central Trust. Imagine having a projection up at the top of one of those buildings - you'd be able to see it from almost anywhere in the vicinity, plus from up on the hills and across the river. It might help with the lull of some of those dead zones between installations and make feel the whole city seem more alive by pulling everything together and make it more cohesive.

53 minutes ago, savadams13 said:

Having worked both behind the scenes and volunteering up front two years ago and this year. I definitely heard alot more complaining from people this year. Its a shame that people have to be so down right rude and hostile.

 

I had on three separate occasions Friday of people demanding myself/Artswave reimburse them for the parking fee, since the light projections were off because of weather. My response was, " Sorry, but this is a free event, and its heavily relied upon by the weather. Your best bet is to use it as a tax right off, since we are a non-profit"  

 

I also heard people constantly saying, "this is it?" "My kid can do this on their screensaver" "I was not expecting to have to walk to every installation"  " I am not riding that silly choo choo". 

 

Beyond that the event grew in size, definitely some bumps and bruises, with any growing pains. I think there will be alot of lessons learned, and improvements for the next event in two years.  Still enjoy seeing the multitude of people walking around downtown, and seeing all the kids light up at each display. Hands down best projection this year was Cincinnatus Temple. 

 

I think they either need to go back to condensing the event or up their budget. You need a level of consistentcy from mural to mural display. One shouldn't be meh and the other more extravagant, especially if people took time to reach that mural. 

10 minutes ago, troeros said:

 

I think they either need to go back to condensing the event or up their budget. You need a level of consistentcy from mural to mural display. One shouldn't be meh and the other more extravagant, especially if people took time to reach that mural. 

 

I think condensing will be more in the cards. Up the budget will be more difficult, everything in the budget is private donations. I highly doubt, any municipality will be willing to open the coffers and donate. To many anti-this and anti-that would put a stop to any government dollars for an event such as blink. 

 

27 minutes ago, savadams13 said:

 

I think condensing will be more in the cards. Up the budget will be more difficult, everything in the budget is private donations. I highly doubt, any municipality will be willing to open the coffers and donate. To many anti-this and anti-that would put a stop to any government dollars for an event such as blink. 

 

The WCPO article I posted earlier states that blink officials are looking for public funding for 2021. 

13 minutes ago, troeros said:

 

The WCPO article I posted earlier states that blink officials are looking for public funding for 2021. 

 

Looking and receiving though are two different things...

20 minutes ago, savadams13 said:

 

Looking and receiving though are two different things...

 

Yes, but when you have 1.5 million visitor's to see Blink you could easily start implementing advertisements on murals or projected advertisements next to the murals. I know it's not the best way to go, but advertisements are typically the best way to fund these type of art endeavors. 

The crowds, at their peak, overwhelmed the streetcar.  The streetcars were forced to stop at every single stop on every single run for hours, which slowed their speed massively as compared to a typical run where the streetcars breeze past half of the stops.  The group I was with didn't want to ride the streetcar because there were 200+ people waiting at The Banks station - which is more than a single streetcar can handle.  

 

I've been arguing for a long time that we need to buy a sixth streetcar so we can run five during big events.  

I was at Court Street over the weekend and I know there has been some talk about closing it off to traffic. It made me think of walking through Little Italy in New York in the summer when they close down the street and make it an al fresca dining spot on the weekends. To me, this could be the best of both worlds. Court street could be used for vehicle traffic during the day and week but in the after hour period, the cafe's could capitalize on open air dining and using the space as a gathering area.

I have a lot of mixed opinions about this year's Blink. I should also say that I was not in town for the 2017 event so I cannot directly compare this year's event to the first one.

 

Of course it was great to see so many people it the urban core at once. You could tell that a lot of these visitors were people who usually wouldn't be walking around in OTR, and a lot of kids probably had their first exposure to the Big City during Blink, so that's great. It was not an Oktoberfest or Taste of Cincinnati density of people (which is a good thing IMO) -- it was about 3x as many people as Taste, but spread out over a much larger area. Some areas were still fairly crowded and hard to get through, while others had much thinner crowds. Logistically, everything worked pretty well (minus a few incidents I witnessed on the "closed" streets), and Metro diverting all buses into the RTC seemed to be a huge success. I hope we can learn from this and start using the RTC more for other big events.

 

But, as for the content of the event... the consensus that I have heard from a lot of people was that this year's event was too spread out. For the most part you would see one installation then have to walk a few blocks to see the next one. Even with extra streetcars running and it being free, there is no way that the streetcar could handle more than 2-3% of the total crowds, which meant that most people were walking very long distances and/or deciding to skip entire "zones". I think extending it to Covington was a bit too much of a stretch, and they should have concentrated the same number of installations between Smale and Rhinegeist.

 

I have also seen a lot of people saying they weren't impressed by the quality of the installations. The Courthouse, the Cincinnatus mural, the Tower building on Main were the big standouts for me, but some of the other projection mappings were not super impressive. The interactive installations were cool but I wish there were more of them, and that they were more distributed instead of being concentrated in a few spots. And then there were a few murals that were simply illuminated with floodlights, which was pretty meh. It seems like the organizers also made an effort to not redo any of the installations from the 2017 event, which I think was a mistake. It would have been cool to see some of the "greatest hits" from 2017 Blink return in addition to a lot of new stuff.

 

For me, it brought back a lot of memories of the old Midpoint Music Festival before MEMI took it over. While the focus of MPMF was seeing bands playing in bars across the neighborhood, what made it really cool was seeing normally dead streets packed with people, venues that weren't normally open to the public being opened up, tons of street vendors and food trucks everywhere, and just a general feeling of activity and vibrancy. In a way, Blink felt like it had the vibrancy of MPMF on the streets, but without the Main Attraction of the bands. Even Luminocity, the predecessor to Blink, was more of a "show" that served as a main focal point, while Blink lacked a clear theme or focal point.

 

I also think the impact of Blink on downtown businesses was pretty mixed. Some restaurants along the route were packed during Blink (we waited about 1 1/2 hours to get into Revolution on Saturday which is way longer than normal) but it seems like other businesses were expecting large crowds that never materialized. We had dinner at Crzy Monk on Friday and were the only customers in the restaurant, which was really sad because they had gone through a lot of effort to create a special prix fixe menu for Blink. A friend also told me that Three Points brewery in Pendleton was more dead than they had ever seen it before. I think this might go to show that while Blink attracted a lot of suburbanites into the core, those aren't necessarily the type of people who are going to drop $100 at a nice restaurant or pop into a new brewery while they're here.

5 minutes ago, taestell said:

I have a lot of mixed opinions about this year's Blink. I should also say that I was not in town for the 2017 event so I cannot directly compare this year's event to the first one.

 

Of course it was great to see so many people it the urban core at once. You could tell that a lot of these visitors were people who usually wouldn't be walking around in OTR, and a lot of kids probably had their first exposure to the Big City during Blink, so that's great. It was not an Oktoberfest or Taste of Cincinnati density of people (which is a good thing IMO) -- it was about 3x as many people as Taste, but spread out over a much larger area. Some areas were still fairly crowded and hard to get through, while others had much thinner crowds. Logistically, everything worked pretty well (minus a few incidents I witnessed on the "closed" streets), and Metro diverting all buses into the RTC seemed to be a huge success. I hope we can learn from this and start using the RTC more for other big events.

 

But, as for the content of the event... the consensus that I have heard from a lot of people was that this year's event was too spread out. For the most part you would see one installation then have to walk a few blocks to see the next one. Even with extra streetcars running and it being free, there is no way that the streetcar could handle more than 2-3% of the total crowds, which meant that most people were walking very long distances and/or deciding to skip entire "zones". I think extending it to Covington was a bit too much of a stretch, and they should have concentrated the same number of installations between Smale and Rhinegeist.

 

I have also seen a lot of people saying they weren't impressed by the quality of the installations. The Courthouse, the Cincinnatus mural, the Tower building on Main were the big standouts for me, but some of the other projection mappings were not super impressive. The interactive installations were cool but I wish there were more of them, and that they were more distributed instead of being concentrated in a few spots. And then there were a few murals that were simply illuminated with floodlights, which was pretty meh.

 

For me, it brought back a lot of memories of the old Midpoint Music Festival before MEMI took it over. While the focus of MPMF was seeing bands playing in bars across the neighborhood, what made it really cool was seeing normally dead streets packed with people, venues that weren't normally open to the public being opened up, tons of street vendors and food trucks everywhere, and just a general feeling of activity and vibrancy. In a way, Blink felt like it had the vibrancy of MPMF on the streets, but without the Main Attraction of the bands. Even Luminocity, the predecessor to Blink, was more of a "show" that served as a main focal point, while Blink lacked a clear theme or focal point.

 

I also think the impact of Blink on downtown businesses was pretty mixed. Some restaurants along the route were packed during Blink (we waited about 1 1/2 hours to get into Revolution on Saturday which is way longer than normal) but it seems like other businesses were expecting large crowds that never materialized. We had dinner at Crzy Monk on Friday and were the only customers in the restaurant, which was really sad because they had gone through a lot of effort to create a special prix fixe menu for Blink. A friend also told me that Three Points brewery in Pendleton was more dead than they had ever seen it before. I think this might go to show that while Blink attracted a lot of suburbanites into the core, those aren't necessarily the type of people who are going to drop $100 at a nice restaurant or pop into a new brewery while they're here.

 

I mean it's a 4 hour event with huge crowds...It takes alot of time to visit all the points and I'm not sure how many people made a point to go and eat dinner/get drinks while visiting blink. 

 

I think Blink should perhaps make attempts to make it a Day and Night event in the future. Maybe have popup art installations on routes that are different than the night routes. 

 

And I spoke of this earlier, but Blink was never supposed to be this crazy laser art show akin to Luminocity. Its an urban walking art gallery. Like any art museum some pieces will blow your mind, other pieces will make you feel less so. Maybe the media overhyped the event a bit, but blink was always meant to be a celebration of the arts in every shape and form. From big name artists to artists just getting started at the Art Academy. 

 

I think changing the expectations a bit will also help and maybe changing the format (day/night routes) and maybe a bit of condensing. 

 

I think maybe having individual zones for each day might help as well. For instance;

 

THURSDAY: Covington Zone

 

Friday: OTR Zone

 

Saturday: CBD Zone

 

Sunday: The Banks Zone

 

 

 

 

 

22 minutes ago, troeros said:

And I spoke of this earlier, but Blink was never supposed to be this crazy laser art show akin to Luminocity. Its an urban walking art gallery.

 

Well, that's certainly not how the city and the event organizers were selling it. The organizers have talked about wanting to make this into something that Cincinnati is known for, or "a national event that becomes a serious draw from tourists across America" as you put it earlier in this thread. With all of the street closures, temporary park-and-ride locations, and the amount of publicity in our local media, visitors had very high expectations and judging from a lot of the reaction that I have seen, some of them felt like it didn't live up to their expectations. If the goal is truly just for it to be "an urban walking art gallery," maybe they need to cut back on the hype for 2021.

3 minutes ago, taestell said:

 

Well, that's certainly not how the city and the event organizers were selling it. The organizers have talked about wanting to make this into something that Cincinnati is known for, or "a national event that becomes a serious draw from tourists across America" as you put it earlier in this thread. With all of the street closures, park-and-ride locations, and the amount of publicity in our local media, visitors had very high expectations and judging from a lot of the reaction that I have seen, some of them felt like it didn't live up to their expectations. If the goal is truly just for it to be "an urban walking art gallery," maybe they need to cut back on the hype for 2021.

 

Nobody I've talked to IRL was disappointed. People just like to complain on the internet. 

^ I don't feel like I've heard many people say they were totally disappointed, I just think there are a lot of valid criticisms and the organizers have some kinks to work out for next time. Make it a little more compact to increase the density of installations, bring back some of the "greatest hits" each time rather than trying to be 100% fresh and new (keep in mind how much Cincinnatians love to see the same 3 or 4 features return with each year's WEBN fireworks), maybe add some sort of Luminocity-style main event or have an overarching theme, work out some of the kinks with the road closures and the streetcar, and do a better job of working with downtown businesses to encourage people to stick around and spend money before/after rather than making it a drive-in/drive-out experience. With those tweaks it could be a truly awesome event.

11 minutes ago, taestell said:

 

Well, that's certainly not how the city and the event organizers were selling it. The organizers have talked about wanting to make this into something that Cincinnati is known for, or "a national event that becomes a serious draw from tourists across America" as you put it earlier in this thread. With all of the street closures, temporary park-and-ride locations, and the amount of publicity in our local media, visitors had very high expectations and judging from a lot of the reaction that I have seen, some of them felt like it didn't live up to their expectations. If the goal is truly just for it to be "an urban walking art gallery," maybe they need to cut back on the hype for 2021.

 

Well like you said you never went the 2017 event. Blink 2019 was very similar to Blink 2017, except they added more zones which I think created more taveling and ultimately more headaches. 

 

It was better when it was compact but ultimately it was the same experience more or less. I think people will still attend in 2021.

 

It's a free event most importantly, it showcases cool art and cool installations that you never normally experience on a day to day basis, and at the end of the day the crowds, especially families enjoyed the heck out of seeing their kids faces bright up at the seesaws on court street or the big disco ball in Covington. 

 

It's hard to complain about something when it's free. But people will still try, especially on the internet. 

19 minutes ago, troeros said:

 

Well like you said you never went the 2017 event. Blink 2019 was very similar to Blink 2017, except they added more zones which I think created more taveling and ultimately more headaches. 

 

It was better when it was compact but ultimately it was the same experience more or less. I think people will still attend in 2021.

 

It's a free event most importantly, it showcases cool art and cool installations that you never normally experience on a day to day basis, and at the end of the day the crowds, especially families enjoyed the heck out of seeing their kids faces bright up at the seesaws on court street or the big disco ball in Covington. 

 

It's hard to complain about something when it's free. But people will still try, especially on the internet. 

As someone that attended the first Blink in 2017 and this one I agree with @taestell's observations. No one knew what to expect in 2017 so there was a greater sense of wonder and exploration. In 2019, people developed expectations based on 2017 so some were bound to be disappointed.

 

In regards to repeat installations, while different animations, the Hamilton County Courthouse, CAC and Memorial Hall all returned from 2017. 

 

It was more spread out this year but if you planned to attend multiple days you can see most of it. It took all four days for my wife and I to cover everything in 2017, and it was the same this time but I missed a few installations because of rain or malfunctions.

 

As for restaurants, I also saw a lot of hit or miss. Food trucks seemed like winners, and most restaurants along the route seemed to have an uptick. 

 

Transit seemed to work well although I noticed the streetcar was getting bunched up periodically. It looks like they were running 4 trains through the whole event. The Roebling ended up being a huge chokepoint that only really got ironed out on Saturday night and Sunday.

 

My biggest complaint was that people felt entitled with the installations this year. My wife was on one of the design teams and her installation was partially destroyed by children and some adults. Should they have invested in more durable construction? Sure, but with a budget of $7,000 it's hard to build something interactive that doesn't break when people enter the picture.

 

 

 

The parade and physical objects were a lot more interesting than the projections.  I think it would be a lot more interesting to get rid of the projections and have the parade 2 nights in a row, Friday & Saturday, and then have physical light-up "floats" that don't move that are installed for the weekend.  

 

If the parade were to be held two nights in a row, people would be compelled to put more effort into their parade act.  

The whole thing was about creating social media exposure for Cincinnati.  The event looked a lot more interesting on Instagram than in real life, which was the point (actually, that's the whole point of social media).  It also worked to elevate the careers of its organizers, who took a poorly-written victory lap in the Business Courier:

 

Quote

 

Cincinnati shined with celebration for all the world to see. Spanning more than 30 city blocks and crossing the historic Roebling Suspension Bridge, for four-days and nights Blink turned our region into an outdoor, immersive art museum for all to enjoy.

 

Blink flooded our region with an abundance of art and light and by extension a vision of a shared future that transcends everything we know today.

 

Today we celebrate the beauty of our city and its neighborhoods; importantly, we celebrate shared humanity and we extend our gratitude to the people of the shining Future City that is Cincinnati.

 

Your light is awe-inspiring; your radiance is undeniable.

 

Cincinnati has made significant strides; however, in order to continue creating pathways to opportunity, we must keep our eyes, minds and hearts open; we must identify and acknowledge our region's ongoing struggles and we must work together to find solutions, provide access to needed resources and to nourish one another’s growth.

 

Blink has come to a close, the artists, creators and makers have gone, it is up to each of us, in our Future City, to continue to draw light from one another. In our Future City we make the rules together, we hold ourselves responsible and we hold each other accountable to stay the darkness of ignorance and poverty. Not here we say.

 

In our Future City we are actively building a culture of equality and inclusion. We recognize we are stronger together; therefore, no one person, neighborhood or business takes a backseat, we encourage the transfer of information, we herald contribution and we empower self-expression – in all its many forms.

 

And so, as the Queen City holds court on the national stage, we have within our grasp the enviable moment to lead by example and illuminate the path toward inclusion and wonderment that was made possible by a great equalizer – art. We are committed to continuing to drive the city we love forward by creating opportunity, probing possibility – and we call on you and yours to join us.

 

 

So most the artwork at Blink would have been laughed out of an art class critique and that piece of writing by the organizers would have gotten a D+ from a creative writing teacher and probably would have "gone viral" on his bad student work email list. 

 

https://www.wlwt.com/article/blink-was-largest-event-in-cincinnati-area-history-organizers-say/29491583

 

Attendance figures are out. Roughly 1.5 million people, making it the largest attended event in Cincy history.

No, there weren't even a fraction 1 million people there.  

 

Let's say Blink covered a 150 block area.  Let's day 150 people were on each block each hour for four hours.  That's 90,000 people each night.  

 

I'm being very liberal with the number of blocks.  This crowd estimation is a total sham.   

3 minutes ago, jmecklenborg said:

No, there weren't even a fraction 1 million people there.  

 

Let's say Blink covered a 150 block area.  Let's day 150 people were on each block each hour for four hours.  That's 90,000 people each night.  

 

I'm being very liberal with the number of blocks.  This crowd estimation is a total sham.   

 

I'm not sure how your calculation are any better. If you were in the Findley market zone how the hell do you know what's occuring in the Covington Zone. 

 

Another instance, blink runs from 7 to 11. What if I decided to come at 10pm while you were only there from 7 to 9?

13 minutes ago, troeros said:

 

I'm not sure how your calculation are any better.

 

Hey look, it's Blink:

 

When I walked past the Bonnaroo Arch last Friday night, it said "Wombat".  Instagramable?  I said NO.  

 

Everything coming from the Blink organizers was hype.  I know one of the guys from 10+ years ago and he was full of it then.  I'm not sure why anybody believes their attendance figures when they're so obviously physically impossible.  

 

Their 1.5 million crowd estimate is 5.7 sold-out Paul Brown Stadiums each night.  So 23 sold-out Paul Brown Stadiums came downtown to look at the Bonnaroo arch?

 

 

 

10 minutes ago, jmecklenborg said:

 

Hey look, it's Blink:

 

When I walked past the Bonnaroo Arch last Friday night, it said "Wombat".  Instagramable?  I said NO.  

 

Everything coming from the Blink organizers was hype.  I know one of the guys from 10+ years ago and he was full of it then.  I'm not sure why anybody believes their attendance figures when they're so obviously physically impossible.  

 

Their 1.5 million crowd estimate is 5.7 sold-out Paul Brown Stadiums each night.  So 23 sold-out Paul Brown Stadiums came downtown to look at the Bonnaroo arch?

 

 

 

 

Yes but your not explaining how your calculations are any better if you weren't able to take attendance in each zone during 7-11 from Thursday to Sunday. 

 

Your only argument is that it's impossible without any figures to back it up. 

10 minutes ago, jmecklenborg said:

Their 1.5 million crowd estimate is 5.7 sold-out Paul Brown Stadiums each night.  So 23 sold-out Paul Brown Stadiums came downtown to look at the Bonnaroo arch?

 

I was skeptical of their 1.5 million number but when you put it this way it actually seems very plausible. There were like 100 times more people downtown each night than there are for a given Bengals game.

 

The hotels were 99 percent full. Basically every single person I know in the area attended at least one night and I know people who traveled from out of region and out of state. I don't know if their estimates are accurate but you're underselling it big time. 

Just now, DEPACincy said:

The hotels were 99 percent full.

 

They're full for Cubs games, too.  

3 minutes ago, troeros said:

Your only argument is that it's impossible without any figures to back it up. 

 

They did not explain their methodology.  Let's see the documentation.  That's what AGAR is in the business of doing: over-hyping things.  They are quite literally professional hype-men.  

 

A conventional event like Bonnaroo sells tickets.  A large free event like a fireworks display is much more nebulous because there are many nooks and crannies where people can physically see the fireworks.  But an even where people come and go during the event is as nebulous as can be conceived.   Plus there were plenty of people going about their business who were not downtown to see the event.  People don't stray onto the Bonnaroo grounds because they're coming home from their job in the suburbs.  

 

  

Look to Sydney for ideas on improving the offering. Their yearly Vivid event is a 3-week cultural event. It started as a smaller lights show on the opera house and harbour bridge and quickly turned into a massive event expanding into ‘lights, music and ideas.’ They run cruises on the harbour to get views of the lights from the water. They also have events and talks on fashion, film, urbanism, gallery exhibitions, live music, etc. The main event is and always will be the magical light displays on the Opera House, but as a resident I was more interested in the discussion series.
 

I would avoid the weekends and go during the week after work to avoid the crowds. 
 

https://www.vividsydney.com/

On 10/16/2019 at 11:00 AM, jmecklenborg said:

The whole thing was about creating social media exposure for Cincinnati.  The event looked a lot more interesting on Instagram than in real life, which was the point

I actually agree with this portion of your post, but I disagree with the negative connotation that comes with it. This is reality in 2019 and if we aren't playing the game we will lose out to the other falsely tented up peer cities of Nashville, Indianapolis Columbus etc... 

 

To me it only becomes negative if when people come to our city they have been sold a false bill of goods, but if people are pleasantly surprised when they come here and like what they see then I see nothing wrong with doing any form of marketing, viral messaging or whatever is necessary to improve our standing. 

54 minutes ago, ucgrady said:

I actually agree with this portion of your post, but I disagree with the negative connotation that comes with it. This is reality in 2019 and if we aren't playing the game we will lose out to the other falsely tented up peer cities of Nashville, Indianapolis Columbus etc... 

 

To me it only becomes negative if when people come to our city they have been sold a false bill of goods, but if people are pleasantly surprised when they come here and like what they see then I see nothing wrong with doing any form of marketing, viral messaging or whatever is necessary to improve our standing. 

I agree with this. It's the way the talent attraction game is being played nationally regarding social media. More Instagram posts, stories, shares and likes leads to more interest and more interest leads to visits, tourism dollars and attention. It adds to the continued positive narrative of the city to help with attracting young people.

 

 So far, no other city has done a light festival this big nationally.

 

As for Jake's point, most people don't have his kind of artistic preference so they are  impressed by these things.

Five years later BUMP!

 

Blink 2024: Displays at Music Hall, Kroger building among this year's top attractions

 

Billed as the nation’s largest light, art and projection mapping experience, Blink returns to Greater Cincinnati Thursday, Oct. 17, with more than 2 million people expected to take in the show over four days.

 

This will be the fourth biennial iteration of the sprawling, 30-block event, which began in 2017 with an estimated 1 million visitors. During the last event, in 2022, that number was doubled, with an estimated 2.1 million attending.

 

Organizers are expecting a similar turnout for the free spectacle this year.

 

“The interesting part about Blink is we don't require anyone to buy a ticket or sign up in advance,” said Justin Brookhart, Blink’s executive director.

 

That makes precise, advance estimates more difficult. But in gauging advance hotel reservations and air travel that week, social media buzz and other indicators, “Everything's tracking for this to be another great and well-attended event,” Brookhart said.

 

More below:

https://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/news/2024/10/08/blink-2024-map-newport-music-hall-kroger-building.html

 

A lot of times for event attendance numbers you can ask the Port-A-John company. But with Blink you have a lot of people using restrooms in businesses as well which makes it harder.

Looks like the vacant ground floor retail space in Trinity Flats is being used as some kind of Blink HQ:

 

I've been looking over the map to see what I need to check out and I really feel like it's spread too thin again. There is a pretty big dead zone between downtown and Smale, and then another large gap going over to Lytle Park. Covington is cool, but it goes down to 7th street which is nearly 3 miles away from Findlay market area. Newport isn't connected to the Cincy side because of the gap between Lytle and the river, no installations on Sawyer Point or along the Purple People Bridge for example.

 

I think extending to the NKY cities is admirable, but its not being done very well and I think I will just focus on OTR and Downtown with a streetcar hop down to the banks to see some of the Smale things but I really doubt, unfortunately, that I'll get across to Covington or Newport. Either way I'm excited for the weekend, I always love Blink because it makes Cincy feel like a city with quadruple the population and just being out and about is great. 

It might not be so bad that the installations are spread a little thin, as it will help spread out the crowds more. However I also remember when MPMF used to be spread out across multiple different neighborhoods and felt more like a collection of disconnected shows happening simultaneously rather than a singular festival. The feel of it definitely improved when they decided to consolidate everything in downtown and OTR.

Edited October 17, 2024Oct 17 by taestell

Blink 2024 kicks off with beaming parade along Ohio River

 

Blink, billed as the nation’s largest art and light celebration, kicked off its four-day run Thursday with an illuminated parade along the Ohio River.

 

About 3,000 participants, replete in costumes and lights, walked along Mehring Way from Paycor Stadium to Great American Ball Park on a cool October evening. People from schools, dance groups, community organizations, neighborhoods and businesses took part.

 

There was more room to view the parade along Mehring Way than its previous routes on Fifth Street (2022) or Vine Street (2019), according to Justin Brookhart, executive director of Blink.

 

More below:

https://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/news/2024/10/18/blink-2024-parade-art-light-festival-photos.html

 

Somehow I was completely unaware of the Asianati Night Market along Court street, but walking through throngs of people while lasers projected on a building above me and smells of myriad asian foods being fried up all around me with lit up lanterns swinging above my head was an incredible experience and I felt like I was NOT in Cincinnati Ohio. The projections on our architectural gems are great, the installations can be really cool but my favorite part of Blink is still just the million f'ing people spiling through the basin.

I didn't go this year but from the looks of it, the Kroger Building needs that projecting lighting at night...permanently. And you too Music Hall.