South End Art Hop
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South End Art Hop
” data-medium-file=”https://i0.wp.com/www.sevendaysvt.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Pubnote1-1.jpg?fit=294%2C300&ssl=1″ data-large-file=”https://i0.wp.com/www.sevendaysvt.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Pubnote1-1.jpg?fit=780%2C796&ssl=1″ src=”https://i0.wp.com/www.sevendaysvt.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Pubnote1-1.jpg?resize=780%2C796&ssl=1″ alt=”South End Art Hop” class=”wp-image-184620″ srcset=”https://i0.wp.com/www.sevendaysvt.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Pubnote1-1.jpg?resize=1003%2C1024&ssl=1 1003w, https://i0.wp.com/www.sevendaysvt.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Pubnote1-1.jpg?resize=294%2C300&ssl=1 294w, https://i0.wp.com/www.sevendaysvt.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Pubnote1-1.jpg?resize=768%2C784&ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/www.sevendaysvt.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Pubnote1-1.jpg?resize=1505%2C1536&ssl=1 1505w, https://i0.wp.com/www.sevendaysvt.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Pubnote1-1.jpg?resize=2006%2C2048&ssl=1 2006w, https://i0.wp.com/www.sevendaysvt.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Pubnote1-1.jpg?resize=1200%2C1225&ssl=1 1200w, https://i0.wp.com/www.sevendaysvt.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Pubnote1-1.jpg?resize=2000%2C2042&ssl=1 2000w, https://i0.wp.com/www.sevendaysvt.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Pubnote1-1.jpg?resize=780%2C796&ssl=1 780w, https://i0.wp.com/www.sevendaysvt.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Pubnote1-1.jpg?resize=400%2C408&ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/www.sevendaysvt.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Pubnote1-1.jpg?resize=706%2C721&ssl=1 706w, https://i0.wp.com/www.sevendaysvt.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Pubnote1-1.jpg?w=1560&ssl=1 1560w, https://i0.wp.com/www.sevendaysvt.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Pubnote1-1.jpg?w=2340&ssl=1 2340w, https://i0.wp.com/www.sevendaysvt.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Pubnote1-1-1003×1024.jpg?w=370&ssl=1 370w” sizes=”(max-width: 780px) 100vw, 780px” />
Readers are still working their way through last week’s blockbuster 30th Birthday Issue. They’ve stopped me on the street, at the gym, in the grocery store and during Burlington’s South End Art Hop to express their appreciation for the 120-page retrospective.
The feedback is a relief. While planning the issue, we worried about the enormity of the timeline that runs through most of the paper, as well as the 30 standout stories from the past that took up 10 pages. Would the combination amount to too much navel-gazing? Apparently not.
Dan Gottlieb, a reader from South Strafford who made a generous donation last week, explained that the “straw that broke the camel’s back” was the realization that “I had read, and largely remembered, the vast majority of the major articles from 20-plus years covered in this week’s paper! If that’s not evidence that you’re influencing me and providing value, I’m not sure what is.”
Michael Wood-Lewis of Front Porch Forum emailed: “I studied the timeline closely and marked it up with milestones of my own — 1997 started reading 7D, 1999 fatherhood, 2000 Five Sisters Forum launch, etc. Loved to cross-reference with VT and 7D milestones. You all did a great job in this issue of making it plain just how unusually lucky BTV and VT are to have 7D. I couldn’t agree more!”
We were surprised and delighted to see that Wood-Lewis inserted a “happy birthday” message to Seven Days in every Friday forum — hopefully motivating new readers to seek out the paper. Rob Gurwitt of Norwich also gave us a shout-out from the other side of the state in his witty and wise Daybreak newsletter.
Deputy publisher Cathy Resmer and I went on Vermont Public’s “Vermont Edition,” and host Mikaela Lefrak described Seven Days better than either of us ever could on live radio. On WCAX-TV, Darren Perron was the benevolent inquisitor for a short bit on the nightly news and a longer piece for the Sunday show “You Can Quote Me.” He had dug up the station’s story on the paper’s launch 30 years ago, which includes footage of a more hirsute and better-toned version of yours truly delivering the inaugural issue to local retailers.
At the end of the segment, Perron noted that the birth of Seven Days was one of the first stories he reported as a Vermont journalist, then working for his hometown newspaper, the Barton Chronicle. In fact, that’s the point we were trying to make with last week’s epic paper: Seven Days’ history belongs to all of us.
My only regret is that we didn’t have a community party and reunion like the one we threw when Seven Days turned 20. That’s in part because, at the beginning of the summer, we learned that the company behind Foundation, our website publishing platform, was going out of business. We knew the transition to a new content management system — migrating 30 years of local journalism, more than 66,000 articles — would be happening at the same time as our birthday. We launched the new site on August 28.
That impacted everyone at Seven Days but weighed heaviest on the shoulders of our intrepid creative director, Don Eggert. In addition to overseeing the graphic design of the paper, he’s in charge of digital products, marketing and high-level event planning.
So, we fell back on an age-old solution: celebration by association, taking advantage of the coincidence of our birthday and Art Hop, the biggest party in Burlington. Seven Days also produced the event guide that was smack-dab in the middle of last week’s Birthday Issue.
One of Kevin Donegan’s collaborative artworks
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On Friday, while it was still light out, my partner, Tim, and I strolled down Pine Street and took in the scene. We started in Steve Conant’s whimsical and inspiring Soda Plant, where we caught the Hokum Bros. starting their set at the Venetian Cocktail & Soda Lounge and visited mother-daughter painters Katharine Montstream and Charlotte Dworshak in their shared studio.
Noting that the South End Get Down was already packed with people, we explored the funky Pine Street Studios and the Howard Space. In Sterling Furniture Works, we found our friend and author Tim Brookes showing off his latest creations: unique woodworks engraved with letters from the endangered alphabets he has been studying.
We joined revelers at the Lamp Shop and could have stayed there all night — owners Liz Segal and Andy Arp know how to put on a party.
Instead, we bought Venezuelan arepas from a food truck owned by one of Tim’s soccer buddies and sat on the stairs to Mascoma Bank taking it all in, from Sambatucada to the STRUT! Fashion Show. I derived some satisfaction from the realization that, over the years, we have written about almost every organizer, participant and venue involved in this event.
Vermont’s creative sector is what prompted us to start the paper in the first place, and it made me feel hopeful to see a diversity of people — young and old, friends and families, urban and suburban — soaking it up, just as in 1995. We continue to cover it all; this week’s issue is our 31st Performing Arts Preview.
As we sat and watched the Pine Street spectacle, an almost-full moon made its entrance from behind the clouds above Speeder & Earl’s. For one enchanted evening, everything seemed right in the world. That was celebration enough.
The post From the Publisher: Over the Moon appeared first on Seven Days.