Kenmore Neighborhood Alliance in partnership with Akron Civic Commons and Rotary Club of Akron are excited to announce the return of Kenmore First Fridays to the historic Kenmore Boulevard business district. The events will kick off June 3 with live music from the energetic honky-tonk group The Shootouts, whose third album, “Stampede,” is being produced by 10-time Grammy Award winner Ray Benson. The album will also feature special guest appearances from country legend Marty Stuart, Buddy Miller and their touring partners, Asleep at The Wheel.

Joining The Shootouts on the main stage will be local favorites and self-proclaimed “fun band” Akronauts, and additional live music will be programmed by Akron Recording Company and the youth-based nonprofit First Glance’s hip-hop program and will be sponsored by Cargill and Kenmore Chamber of Commerce. In addition, Oddmall’s “The Great Grassman Gathering” will feature over 40 purveyors of art, games, toys, comics, collectables, and all things odd, geeky, bizarre, imaginative, and wonderful. Oddmall’s presence in June marks the first in a series of market partners scheduled to appear each month.

Kenmore First Fridays will take place every first Friday of the month beginning June 3 and will continue through Sept. 2. The free events will run from 6 to 9 p.m. and will feature live music, vendors, family activities, food trucks and an outdoor beer garden with a rotating cast of breweries that include HiHo Brewing Company, Lock 15 Brewing Company and Thirsty Dog Brewing Co. See the full schedule below:

• June 3: The Shootouts with Akronauts, plus Oddmall: The Great Grassman Gathering
• July 1: Big Pop with The Buffalo Ryders, plus SIT Strings presents Virgil Lay Day and Torchbearers’ Inaugural Community Volunteer Fair
• August 5: Free Black! with Shelby Olive, plus East Ave. Market presents “Summer Impressions” community art project
• September 2: Marc Lee Shannon with Indré, plus Crafty Mart

“This year, we’re celebrating the fifth anniversary of our Kenmore Better Block event, which really kick-started our community’s revitalization efforts,” said Tina Boyes, executive director of Kenmore Neighborhood Alliance. “Since then, we’ve added more than $1.5 million in new investment, an historic district and 12 new businesses along Kenmore Boulevard, many of which support our budding music economy. And the growth can be attributable in part to events like Kenmore First Friday. So, this year we’re bringing in bigger bands, adding a new street stage, and partnering with well-known market partners to celebrate that and encourage people to come back.”

Kenmore First Fridays are FREE and presented by Kenmore Neighborhood Alliance, Akron Civic Commons and Rotary Club of Akron, with additional support from Cargill, Kenmore Chamber of Commerce, Kenmore Komics & Games, The City of Akron, The Summit FM, Akron Promise, Evolve Marketing, Fastenal, KeyBank, Portage Path Behavioral Health, Prentice Funeral Homes, Lowry Heating & Cooling, Thomas C. Loepp Law Offices, and AkronBuzz. Event information will be posted as it becomes available at betterkenmore.org/first-friday.

RSVP to the June 3 Kenmore First Friday on Facebook!

Photos by Power Photography

Little is known about Kenmore’s transition from a village to a city in 1922, but one thing is for sure: Vern Christy had a part in it.

Christy, a Marshallville native who moved to Kenmore in 1909, served as a member of the Village Council during Kenmore’s formative years. “He was, in fact, instrumental in collecting signatures of the 15,000 residents of Kenmore required to have (it) declared a city,” reported Lee McCutchen, who interviewed Christy’s wife, Ida, in 1984.

But that was just the beginning – the beginning and the end – as Ida would explain: “It was just about this time that Akron came forth with their decision to annex (Kenmore). Kenmore’s Mayor Hollinger and several on the Village Council were much opposed to the ‘takeover’ and determined not to concede. The evening of the Village Council meeting at which the annexation papers were to be signed, Akron came prepared with subpoenas. When the first subpoena was served on Mayor Hollinger, council members Christy, Goetke and Jones and a fourth member ran from the meeting to forestall the signing of the annexation papers. The four were cited in contempt of court and the sheriff was sent to ‘track them down.’

Verne Christy did not go home that night, but at 3 a.m. the sheriff was there banging on his front door, demanding he come out. Christy’s son-in-law, Walter Edwards, answered the door and asked what Mr. Christy had done, ‘murdered somebody?’ The answer was no, but ‘they were out to get him, and would, dead or alive.’

The four were located, and still refusing to sign, taken to the county jail. Elmer Prentice went down to bail them out, willing to go to almost any figure to post bond for them. The judge refused to set a bond, sentencing them each to a week in jail. The four did sign the annexation papers, but they still served their full time.”

Learn more about the Vern & Ida Christy and their place in early Kenmore history at www.kenmorehistorical.org.

By Jennifer Conn Spectrum News

Published April 20, 2022

Ameer Williamson’s Alien Arts nonprofit exposes kids to the positive side of hip hop and the entertainment industry. (Photo courtesy of Ameer Williamson)

Young people who enjoy hip-hop culture will be exposed to the positive side of the genre during Minus the Alien, a hip-hop experience at the Kenmore Branch of the Akron-Summit County Public Library.

Minus the Alien will perform as part of the library’s Sounds of Akron series, which showcases local musical talent. The event will run from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m., Thursday, April 28 at the library’s Kenmore Branch, 969 Kenmore Blvd.

Minus the Alien will be accompanied by DJ Dramatize & Holbrook Riles III, aka HRIII.

Off the stage, Minus the Alien is Ameer Williamson is a recording artist, youth mentor and community outreach activist. Williamson launched the nonprofit Alien Arts several years ago to provide kids with a platform to enjoy hip hop and rap without being exposed to negative messaging.

“When you say ‘hip hop,’ the first thing that comes to people’s minds is all the negative stuff, and that’s really not where it originated from,” he said.

The Kenmore library hip-hop experience will include a concert, storytelling and a history of hip-hop culture, Williamson said. Organizers hope the event will draw kids who attend the nearby First Glance Skatepark.

Hip hop began in New York City in the early ‘70s when a young man known as DJ Kool Herc set up dueling turntables in his Bronx neighborhood, Williamson said. DJ Kool Herc’s public jams for neighborhood kids sparked what is now known as hip hop, with rap said to have sprung from rhyming chants he used to encourage the “break-boys” and “break-girls” to come to the dance area as the music played.

That’s the spirit hip hop was intended to embrace, Williamson said.

“My messages are uplifting and motivating,” Williamson said. “And, you know, we talk about social issues in the music and things like that.”

Partnering with area organizations, Alien Arts also hosts hip-hop boot camps designed to expose kids to the fun aspects of the hip-hop culture, such as songwriting and mural creation, and to help them learn about careers in entertainment, from DJing to music production, he said.

A Hip-hop Boot Camp is planned for this summer, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., Monday, August 1 to Friday, August 5 at the Weathervane Playhouse in Akron, he said.

Williamson is also working on launching the Ohio Urban Arts Initiative, which is planned to bring together local educators and musicians to continue exposing young people to the positive aspects of hip-hop through programming in schools, he said.

“It all boils down to positive programming, is what I call it,” he said. “If they feel like the music is influencing them in a negative way, we can do the opposite as well.”

One hundred and twenty three years ago this week – on April 6, 1899 – the man who changed the way movies were seen forever was born.

In the early days of cinema, Harry Coulter Williams was living in Kenmore and working as a projectionist at two Akron movie houses: the Majestic (located in the Summit Lake district to the south of Downtown on S. Main Street), and the Norka (located on E. Market across from the Goodyear factory). Movie screens of the day left much to be desired and often times films would appear dim or dark to the viewer.

Williams himself described these early movie screens as “painted bedsheets” to the Akron Beacon Journal in 1966.

Ever the troubleshooter, the reels in the young projectionist’s head began spinning while he looked out at the dimly lit screen and he began to consider ways to potentially enhance the appearance of the movies he was projecting.

After some experimenting, Williams found what he was looking for one afternoon in 1925 in a canoe house along the western shore of Summit Lake when he tried painting a stout cloth with silver paint.

This was the day the “Silver Screen” was born and the movie industry forever changed.

Encouraged by the reflective properties of the silver paint, he decided to try it on the screen at the Majestic Theatre where it was a success – producing a brighter picture at all angles with top reflectivity at direct viewing and extra diffusion for movie goers seated in side seats and balconies.

Next, he painted the screen at the Norka Theatre and before too long he was producing his silver screens, which he branded as “Williams Perlite,” in Kenmore and selling them to theatres everywhere.

“Fox, Warner Brothers, MGM – they all picked up on it,” Williams’ daughter-in-law and former Kenmore High School teacher Jan Williams explained in an interview on Around Akron with Blue Green.

An early adopter of the silver screen was the Rakoci family-owned Rialto Theatre – located just down the road from the Williams Screen Company.

The Rialto Theatre had the first silver screen on Kenmore Blvd. The addition of the Williams Perlite, and an impressive marquee, enabled the smaller, 300-seat Rialto to stand out and compete with the larger 480-seat Boulevard Theatre, located just two blocks away.

Williams’ innovation extended beyond the silver screen.

In 1929, he started perforating his screens to let the sound of the first “talking pictures” through, and in 1947, he developed a vinyl plastic screen used to make larger screens.

He built screens and operated the Williams Screen Company on Summit Lake Blvd. until 1971 and was innovating right until the end of this life.

“He was experimenting with roll-up awnings for campers,” Jan Williams said. “If he’d lived longer he probably would have been in on that industry too.”

Harry Coulter Williams passed away at the age of 73 on February 10, 1973, but his legacy lives on today every time you see a movie in a theatre or hear the term “silver screen” used.

In 2015, the Rialto Theatre was restored to Kenmore Blvd. after closing six decades prior. While the contemporary Rialto Theatre is a music and performance venue (thought it does screen films on occasion), it pays homage to its movie house past and Harry Coulter Williams with a plaque honoring him in its ticket booth.

To learn more about Harry Coulter Williams, check out “The Silver Screen” on Around Akron with Blue Green.