THUNDER BAY — Definitely Superior Art Gallery will host the 17th annual The Hunger, an eight-venue Halloween festival in Thunder Bay's north core on Saturday.
"If it's Halloween, it must be The Hunger," said David Karasiewicz, the gallery's executive/artistic director. "This is the followup to last year's Hunger event, which was the second-largest attended event in its history with more than 3,000 attending."
One cover price of $20 allows attendees aged 19 and over into all eight venues where participants can treat themselves to what Karasiewicz calls, "the wildest, slickest Halloween you'll remember."
Revellers will receive a wristband and multi-pass on the night of the event with times and locations for acts for which they choose to see and hear. Participating venues include The Foundry, Black Pirates Pub, The Paramount with its two levels and two stages, Nortenos Cantina, The Sovereign Room, Port Arthur Legion Branch 5, and Red Lion Smokehouse.
During the evening, patrons can enjoy 50 performance acts including 35 bands and DJs, 265 musicians and 15 specialty performances.
And attendees can come dressed in a Halloween costume for a chance to win prizes at each location.
"Move between venues and interact with every soul along the way and you could even win prizes in the street," Karasiewicz said.
Caitlin Van Ballegooie, manager at the Red Lion Smokehouse, said The Hunger event helps businesses like theirs to reach out to a new demographic.
"It reintroduces downtown to a lot of the new people coming into town, like all the university and college or just anybody looking to have a great time," Van Ballegooie said. "It helps introduce them to new locations . . . and since it's more of a pub crawl type event, it helps everybody see the new places that they don't normally get to see. It just helps breathe some new, fresh air into all of downtown."
She added that the near end of the downtown construction will provide a more walkable area for the revellers on Saturday.
"Nobody's driving, which is really safe and good and businesses like Uride and Driverseat Thunder Bay will be out and about," she said. "But having the area more walkable will help with that, especially because there are more areas where people can walk safely without worrying about traffic."
This year's Hunger is a fundraising initiative for the contemporary arts to support Definitely Superior Art Gallery's phase two transition and renovations into its newly repurposed industrial gallery and performance complex space, in the Cumberland Cinema 5 building.
"It will also help to sustain and provide financial support to our ongoing annual multi-disciplinary contemporary arts and educational New Generation Youth program and our special developmental production, recording, and tour funding for professional musicians/performance artists," Karasiewicz said.
Definitely Superior is a charitable, non-profit, artist-run centre and gallery. Karasiewicz said fundraising is essential to supplement the challenging environment of all levels of government arts funding.
"It is The Hunger for a reason," he said.
Sandi Krasowski is a Local Journalism Initiative reporter with the Chronicle-Journal
