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Vegas. If someone gets some-thing going, they break it apart or copy it.

The influx of people hasn’t bolstered the Arts Factory?

My income for First Friday has dropped by 30 percent since First Friday LLC took over. A lot of people drank the Zappos Kool-Aid that they are going to be part of that. In the beginning they talked about art, art, art. But their art con-sultant is no longer with them. That lasted a nanosecond. They’re looking for a return for the community? Whose com-munity? The arts community? Are you trying to have a party or trying to have art? It’s a dif-ferent conversation. We’ve had to adapt, the tenants, trying to sell things to that crowd—trin-kets, buttons, silly items.

What’s been the effect of the party atmosphere?

An example: We got a visit from the Metropolitan Police Department saying they got a report we were serving [alcohol to] underage people. That’s not true. They said they were going to send someone in undercover. Well, God bless you. We said, “Someone came here, we assume for First Friday, and they brought their 6-year-old daughter, and they got separated from her.” When they found her she had alcohol on her breath, so they assume we must have served her. With that influx of people, you get more of the crazies. I didn’t want to be in the liquor business, I wanted to be in the art business.

Don’t additional police help make downtown safer?

If I came down here and saw all those police, I’d think, “Why are the cops here?” When I hire private security, I can get them to pick up trash and talk to people, give them information. The offi-cers, all I get is the show of force.

How have logistics and park-ing problems affected you?

People are opportunists, they’re vultures. The city, the garbage companies, all poach on First Friday. The tow trucks don’t come down to tow cars any other day of the month.

Do you dread First Friday?We hunker down, like, “Here

we go again boys and girls.” We put more energy into what we call the Cultural Weekend—Pre-view Thursday, and on the Sat-urday afterward, the Arts Factory holds events. We’ve had success

bringing down the art crowd the night before and after.

If First Friday hasn’t been the boon you wanted, how about The Smith Center?

The Smith Center has been—what’s the appropriate word?—the coming of the Mes-siah. We didn’t see it coming. We thought we were going to get a few trickle-overs when something happened. No, no, no. Depending on the show, it fills out the restaurant and the bar. With Wicked right now, we know we’re going to be 100 percent full. And these are peo-ple who are dressed nice, they are affluent, they love walking the galleries, like, “Oh my God, look at these. Why haven’t we been down here before?”

Are you optimistic for the future of First Friday?

I’m extremely optimistic because at some point, First Friday Las Vegas will have lost enough money to think they’ve got to change their model. I’m hoping for six months instead of eight years from now.

Sounds like you’re rooting for failure.

I’m rooting for change! I think they’re smart enough to see that a change has to be made. – S.B.

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IN SUMMER 2011, Cindy Funk-houser realized that she could no longer run First Friday. Enter Tony Hsieh’s Downtown Project.

Hsieh recognized First Fri-day’s cultural importance, and acquired the rights to the event. He entrusted First Friday to Joey Vanas, an events and entertain-ment marketing expert who had helped promote Hsieh’s best-selling book, Delivering Happiness. Hsieh recognized that while Vanas had little art experience, he understood how to connect with large numbers of people and how to function under deadline—two skills vital to the production of a sprawling monthly festival.

This First Friday marks Vanas’ first year as its chief manag-ing partner. And he couldn’t be happier. “I’m the biggest customer that First Friday has; I generally buy something every month,” he says. But while he’s thrilled that he and First Friday

have come so far, he’s more interested in the future.

Your staff is you and four others. Does it ever seem like too much to handle?

In any big event, the two weeks before is all irons in the fire and everyone going crazy. We’ve got four stages, four bars, five blocks of areas that we’re covering, and 70 curated artists. We try to make sure that all of our resources and energy and dollars are put into making this happen and improving the experience for everyone. And I don’t see any end to that. I can hire two more people, and we’re just going to grow another 10,000 more par-ticipants … and then it’s going to be a 30,000-person event with six people working on it.

Downtown Project has cre-ated fashion and technology incubators. Is First Friday an art incubator?

One hundred percent. ... We’re looking 10, 20, 30 years ahead and trying to figure out how we can grow this thing in a way that it’s a huge value

addition to everyone involved and everyone it touches. So we’re launching the First Friday Foundation at this next event.

What is the First Friday Foundation?

It’s going to be a nonprofit organization separate from First Friday Las Vegas. … First Friday Foundation will be a local artist’s best friend. ... The First Friday Foundation is really about integration—taking local artists and getting them commission projects where they will get paid. Commission projects will be a big part of this thing—a lot of civic art. In any city, civic art is kind of like an evolutionary in-dicator. We want to improve and enhance the civic art in our city.

What’s next for First Friday? We want this thing to be a

citywide event. Right now it’s in the Arts District, but the idea from the beginning was to expand out west toward The Smith Center and do another activation there, and then fill in the gaps between the Arts District and Fremont East. It’s a

little bit over a mile, but seems like five miles because there’s nothing in between there.

I heard of a plan to put Burn-ing Man art pieces on empty lots. Is that happening?

We’re working with Burn-ing Man and the Black Rock Arts Foundation to bring some large-scale art here. It’s inked; it’s a done deal. Now we can really leverage the experience these people have in building community and in finding and selling large-scale pieces of art.

So downtown Vegas will be a Burning Man staging area?

It fits both our objectives. Our objective is to create communi-ty and foster creativity. Burning Man does both those things, and to a level most people will never achieve. Now, they’re try-ing to extend their culture to fit 52 weeks of the year, and we’ll be a testing ground for how well that can work.

Have you had to deal with festival bickering?

There’s lot of pent-up

emotion. Over the years there’s been a lot of infighting that we’ve inherited. That’s been the most unique and difficult chal-lenge for us, because we really want to keep this thing alive and keep everyone engaged and keep it as something that’s great for the community. So when people start to go back and forth and bicker, you just want to step back and be, like, “This is not what this thing is about.”

Will your work ever be done?I can’t even comprehend

that. Even in cities that are hundreds of thousands of years old, you always see creation and innovation. What’s excit-ing about Vegas right now is you see so much more of that, compared to other cities which are further along the timeline. ... I see this city, the Downtown Project, and First Friday in particular as having enormous room for growth. – G.C.

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To see First Friday hot spots, visit VegasSeven.com/firstfriday.