CAPITOL HILL BLOCK PARTY 2022 FULL LINEUP
DIPLO • CHARLI XCX • JAI WOLF • TORO Y MOI • 100 GECS • REMI WOLF • DANNY BROWN • FLO MILLI • TOKIMONSTA • BEACH BUNNY • DUCKWRTH • THE BETHS • EVAN GIIA • CHET PORTER • CANNONS • SUDAN ARCHIVES • MANILA KILLA • IDK • TKAY MAIDZA • MAGDALENA BAY • KENNY MASON • ELA MINUS • CHLOE MORIONDO • LIZZY MCALPINE • ENUMCLAW • MICHELLE • IAN SWEET • BOYISH • DEMPSEY HOPE • THE BLACK TONES • ARCHIE • BREAKS & SWELLS • THE MOSS • THE GRIZZLED MIGHTY • TEZATALKS • BRENT AMAKER AND THE RODEO • LIVT • ALL STAR OPERA • RUDY • LA FONDA • LINDA FROM WORK • JANG • CLAUDINE MAGBAG • BIBLIOTEKA • ARIANA DEBOO • AMONG AUTHORS • TINSLEY • ERIK WALTERS • JULIETTE • LOVELY COLOURS • JUSMONI • TODD ZACK JR. • KING YOUNGBLOOD • SMALL PAUL • LAURELI • JOZA • JANE DON’T & FRIENDS • SEA LEMON • MOTUS • DAVE SHANAE • RELL BE FREE • HHERB (LIVE SET) • CHINESE AMERICAN BEAR • HALLEY GREG • PINK BOA • ALLA • SEIICHI • GOOD JOB • OH MY EYES

By the time July 2022 rolls around, there is hope that a lot of things will have changed in Seattle since the recent omicron spike. So much has changed since last summer when the Capitol Hill Block Party was canceled due to pandemic challenges. And even more has changed since 2019, the last time the three-day music festival in the streets of Pike/Pine was held.

Tuesday, producers for the event announced the lineup for the 2022 Capitol Hill Block Party with the festival’s recipe seemingly not missing a beat with a mix of national headliners and Pacific Northwest artists and bands slated to take the main stage at Broadway and Pike starting July 22nd.

“If there’s ever been a time to have a community block party to celebrate Seattle’s rich tradition of music and the arts, it’s summer 2022,” Evan Johnson, Capitol Hill Block Party’s talent buyer said in the announcement. “Local businesses — restaurants and bars in particular — have been hit especially hard by the pandemic. We’re excited to help revitalize the neighborhood and bring attention back to the many independent businesses operating in the Pike/Pine Corridor.”

The announcement comes early in the year and follows last May’s decision to pull the plug on the 2021 festival due to concerns over COVID-19 restrictions and lockdowns with uncertainty about what would come next for the virus. The 2021 Capitol Hill Block Party cancellation marked the second year that the COVID-19 crisis kept the one of a kind music festival off the streets of Pike/Pine. CHS reported here on the decision to shut the event down in 2020.

Its hopes for helping the revitalization of Pike/Pine in 2022 are also part of a new message following what had been increasing criticism of the ticketed, three-day music festival by some local businesses and neighborhood residents tired of the mess, the crowds, and the disruption of the neighborhood the event represents for some.

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Evan Giia. Capitol Hill Block Party July 19, 2019 (Image: Joshua Lewis/CHBP)

Attracting around 30,000 attendees every year, the Block Party is a rarity as a ticketed event that takes place on city streets. In 2019, years of tensions between the festival, neighbors, and some of the area’s business community again bubbled up with the city’s event planning officials promising to take a new look at how the event impacts the neighborhood.

Those promises — and the underlying tensions — have now been mostly wiped away by larger concerns about survival of the neighborhood’s economic underpinnings and culture through the challenges of the pandemic.

“More than ever our community needs music, art and performance. After spending years in a pandemic, I’m excited for any opportunity to celebrate, activate and connect when it’s deemed safe to do so,” Joey Burgess, part of the ownership of Queer/Bar, The Cuff, Big Little News, and Cupcake Royale, told CHS about the plans for the 2022 festival. “I just hope the bedrock of these activations are queer, bipoc and local acts getting a platform in the neighborhood to express themselves,” Burgess said.

Burgess is a former business partner of Jason Lajeunesse who formed CHBP producer Daydream State, and part of the ownership of Pike/Pine institutions including the Neumos and Barboza family, Lost Lake Cafe, the Comet, and Big Mario’s.

As for Daydream State, they point at a survey they ran in 2019 that they say showed attendees believe CHBP helped connect them to “Capitol Hill’s music and arts community” and “over half of the survey’s respondents feel the Capitol Hill Block Party is a Seattle summertime tradition that connects them with the broader community.” The Block Party-distributed survey found that attendees “value the fact that Capitol Hill Block party is locally owned with ties to local businesses and nonprofits.”

Producers also found that attendees had a major, less high minded request: water. “This year we’ll be permitting guests to bring empty water bottles and working to ensure everyone has access to free drinking water throughout the festival,” a Daydream State rep tells CHS.

The CHBP-run survey came in 2019 as the city was also collecting feedback on the Block Party and other large events on Capitol Hill like Pride. The city also hired a consulting firm to lead an outreach process with people and businesses in the neighborhood. The results of that process and recommendations from the analysis were available that winter just as the city’s largest events were about to be canceled and locked down.

Findings from the city process for Block Party included survey respondents indicating that large events were “key to neighborhood culture and identity” but specific concerns about a “perceived mismatch between event and location” and “strong concerns about accessibility, mobility, safety, cleanliness.” The consultant’s recommendations ranged from the obvious to a few leaps in logic including exploring “increased police presence,” “community-based security” as well as reexamining “event design infrastructure.” The recommendations also included considering “recalibration of permitting and policies” for use of the streets for the festival and other events as well as a recommendation to “invest in improvements” to Cal Anderson Park to possibly host more events and programming. Six months later, the recommendations would be mostly forgotten in a summer with 11th and Pine and Cal Anderson becoming a center for the CHOP occupied protest.

Now Block Party is set to return with concerns about trash and fenced off businesses still in place but put in new perspective by the years of absence.

Not everybody has forgotten. Don Glickstein, an area resident who has opposed the festival, tells CHS he remains concerned the Block Party “no longer is appropriate for a dense residential and commercial neighborhood” and is concerned a 2022 summer event could turn into “a Covid superspreader party.”

Many music festivals held in the summer of 2021 went off without major associated outbreaks but some were tied to spikes in positive cases including the August Watershed Festival held at the Gorge Amphitheater.

(Image: Ashley Genevieve/CHBP with permission to CHS)

While not all Block Party’s opponents have faded, producers say, even though the 2021 festival had to be canceled, they learned a lot last year about holding a safer music event in pandemic times as they put on the Day In Day Out festival at Seattle Center.

There is also hope to renew efforts of bringing some of the energy of the event outside the ticket lines, fences, and beer gardens into the surrounding neighborhood with a schedule of free events and activities around Block Party.

“We’re wide-eyed about the fact that we’re still very much living with the pandemic, but confident we’ll be able to hold a safe, enjoyable event that brings the local community together,” Johnson said.

Capitol Hill Block Party 2022 will take place July 22nd through the 24th on E Pike and in surrounding venues. You can learn more about purchase tickets at capitolhillblockparty.com.

$5 A MONTH TO HELP KEEP CHS PAYWALL-FREE THIS SPRING
🌈🐣🌼🌷🌱🌳🌾🍀🍃🦔🐇🐝🐑🌞🌻 
Subscribe to CHS to help us hire writers and photographers to cover the neighborhood. CHS is a pay what you can community news site with no required sign-in or paywall. To stay that way, we need you.

Become a subscriber to help us cover the neighborhood for $5 a month -- or choose your level of support 👍