Annual Cooper-young Festival draws thousands to Memphis neighborhood
The 34th annual Cooper-young Festival returned Saturday as thousands walked throughout one of Memphis’ most well-known neighborhoods to visit various vendors, hear live music and food and drink offerings.
Attendees battled heat and waded through crowds as they visited vendors that offered local artwork, clothing, jewelry, even job information and info on local organizations. Food such as hamburgers and hot dogs were sizzling, and water and Icee drinks helped keep the patrons cool.
Memphian Dominique Bingham is a regular Cooper-young Fest attendee and said Saturday was one of the first times her family had been out since the pandemic.
“We look at everything,” Bingham said. “We don’t shop at everything, but we look at like every table, because it’s all unique. Nothing is really the same.”
The annual event dates back to 1988 and serves as a fundraiser for the Cooper-young Business Association, which represents 187 businesses.
The all-day festival kicked off at 9 a.m. Saturday with a parade from the Cooper-young Trestle to the intersection of Cooper and Young, featuring the 32-piece Bellevue Middle School drumline. The event concluded at 7 p.m. Saturday.
Saturday’s festivities were expected to attract an estimated 130,000 people. The festival offered more than 400 vendors and two stages of live music, including headliner Memphis-area singer-songwriter Bailey Bigger, along with Mark Stuart, Wyly Bigger and Danny Banks.
Another perk of the festival is the opportunity for newer businesses to showcase their products in front of thousands of Memphians. On Saturday, that included M-town Merchandise, which opened nearly two years ago.
Co-owners Brannon Hobbs and Brandon Westmoreland created the “edgier” Memphis merchandising business
because they couldn’t find the apparel they wanted in the local marketplace. Their offerings include T-shirts, hats, hoodies and jerseys with many featuring “M-town” in various colors.
Other apparel paid tribute to the city’s past and present, such as the allgreen “Summer Avenue” shirt or “Crystal Palace” shirt in honor of the closed Memphis skating rink.
“A lot of the Memphis merchandise that we saw for football games, basketball games wasn’t really stuff that we wanted, or we had something that we wanted to put out, but it wasn’t out there,” Hobbs said. “So we said why not make it ourselves. That’s what we did and we’re putting it out there to share with everybody else so they can put it out there with the rest of the world.”
Hobbs said the business chose #Mtownproud as its hashtag to let people know they should be proud of their city and all of the good things happening
in Memphis.
“We know a lot of negative things have been going on in the city, but there are so many good people and good businesses and everything else in the city and we want to showcase those things,” Hobbs said.
The already high traffic because of the festival is expected to increase throughout the day with University of Memphis football team playing later this evening against Arkansas State at Simmons Bank Liberty Stadium. Memphis Police previously said Cooper Street will be shut down from Central Avenue to Walker Street and all side streets will be blocked.
For Cooper-young Community Association Amanda Yarbro-dill, the festival offers the non-profit a chance to remind people of their existence and their goals as a non-profit.
“We just want to have a presence here since we are an active community association,”
Yarbro-dill said. “We want people to number one know we exist, but then if they can buy a little merch from us that helps us. We’re a very small nonprofit, so any little bit we can get helps us. To just let people know we’re trying to make Cooper-young a better, more fun place to live.”
One of Yarbro-dill’s favorite Cooperyoung Festival traditions is people dropping by her neighborhood home each year.
“We would tell everybody hey if you need to go to the bathroom stop by our house,” she said. “We always have a cooler with beer. To me, that’s the best part.”
Omer Yusuf covers the Ford project in Haywood County, residential real estate, tourism and banking for The Commercial Appeal. He can be reached via email Omer.yusuf@commercialappeal.com or followed on Twitter @Omerayusuf.