Music Festival a Bad Scene to Some Gaslamp Merchants

The Michelob Street Scene returns to the Gaslamp Quarter this weekend, but several area merchants--most of them antique dealers--aren’t exactly thrilled.

For one thing, the 12-block section of downtown where the two-night urban music festival will be held is going to be closed off from 5 p.m. Thursday to 9 a.m. Sunday.

“It’s definitely an inconvenience,” said Francesca Mercurio, owner of the Gaslamp Emporium, at Fifth Avenue and J Street. “It’s not only going to make it hard for us to get to our own stores, it’s going to make it hard for our customers to get there, too.

“I plan on busing it in so I don’t have to deal with it, but I’m really concerned about our customers--I don’t want them to be towed away.”

“That’s bad, because it’s going to keep people from coming to our store,” added a clerk at Boutique Bonne Volonte on Fifth, between J and Island Avenue, who asked that her name not be used. “What’s the use of being open if people can’t get to your store?”

Also, merchants in the Street Scene site are being urged to close close shop at 3:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday because after that, customers may no longer enter the Gaslamp Quarter without buying a ticket to the event. Businesses are free to remain open after that, but it would serve no purpose because their customers would have to pay to shop.

For Tom Generazzo, owner of the Antique Mall, cater-corner from the Gaslamp Emporium, this cuts two hours a day off his normal business hours.

“We hate the whole thing,” Generazzo said. “If it were up to us, it would never happen. Why should we have to close our business two hours early, when the only people who benefit from it (Street Scene) are the people who put it on, the city, and the restaurants and bars?

“We get nothing out of it, so why should we have to pay for it?”

Generazzo isn’t about to grin and bear it. Earlier this year, he signed a petition against Street Scene--and so, he claims, did “90% of all other Gaslamp Quarter merchants.”

“I saw it as a good idea when it started, something that would bring people into the area and give us some exposure,” Generazzo said. “But it’s outgrown itself--and now that more and more of us are complaining and saying, enough of this, I’m hopeful this will be the last year.”

But Rob Hagey, Street Scene promoter, says the dissidents are in the definite minority.

“I would say that 99% of the merchants in the area are pleased with the event because it gives a lot of promotion to the Gaslamp Quarter,” Hagey said. “Sure, there are a couple of days when there are some inconveniences, when some roads are closed, when businesses are going to be asked to close a little earlier, but in the long run, the kind of promotion that goes into the area helps everyone.”

The death last week of Stevie Ray Vaughan in a helicopter crash left the Storefront, a local emergency shelter for homeless youth, without one of its most benevolent celebrity benefactors.

Every year since 1987, upward of 200 celebrities, most of them rock stars, donate an autographed T-shirt or two each for the shelter’s annual Celebri-T-Shirt Auction. Vaughan regularly gave between 10 and 15.

Whenever he came to town for a concert, including last spring’s San Diego Sports Arena show with Joe Cocker, Vaughan invited Storefront staffers and kids to visit with him backstage. He always made a point of warning them about the perils of drug and alcohol abuse, a problem he overcame three years ago.

And Storefront volunteer Salli Stiner was negotiating with Vaughan’s manager for a coveted signed guitar, to be sold to the highest bidder at next May’s fifth annual auction, when news of the tragedy hit.

“He meant so much to us, and he did so much for us,” Stiner said. ‘When I first met with him five years ago, he hadn’t yet gone into recovery; he was getting loaded a lot and didn’t make much sense.

“But after he went clean, he really got involved. Each year, he gave us more shirts than anyone else, and he was more than willing to share with our kids exactly what recovery meant to him.

“He spent a lot of time with us whenever he was in town; he was just so happy and so alive, so willing to help out in any way he could.”

LINER NOTES: Another San Diego band has made the semifinals in Musician magazine’s third biannual “Best Unsigned Band” contest. Bordertown, whose music is rooted in folk rock and steeped in eclecticism, joins Chula Vista’s Usual Suspects on the list of 250 semifinalists, selected from a field of more than 3,000 original-music bands from all over the world by the magazine’s editors. An all-star panel of judges will choose between 12 and 15 finalists, who will be announced in the October issue of Musician. Finalists will be represented by a song each on the upcoming “Best of the Best Unsigned Bands” compilation album; the top winner will also receive $30,000 in home recording equipment. Bordertown tonight kicks off a month-long engagement at the Triton in Cardiff. They’ll be performing Wednesdays through Saturdays. . . .

Ahhh, the vagaries of the local concert market. Two years ago, with a new album climbing up the national charts, the Moody Blues played San Diego State University’s Open Air Theater and sold only a little more than 3,000 of the 4,835 available tickets. Last Friday night, with no new album since 1988’s “Sur La Mer,” the band returned to the Open Air Theater and got a full house. . . .

Best concert bets for the coming week: Etta James and the Roots Band with the Mighty Penguins, tonight at Humphrey’s on Shelter Island; Leo Kottke, Thursday at the Belly Up Tavern in Solana Beach; Albert Lee and the Biff Baby All-Stars with Rosie Flores, Friday at the Belly Up Tavern; the Beach Boys, Sunday at San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium (immediately after the Padres game); and Big Youth with U-Roy, Tuesday at the Belly Up Tavern.