The Metro Times quoted Krista Johnston, the fair's co-founder and executive director, saying, "For 19 years, the DIY Street Fair has served as the beating heart of Metro Detroit's creative pulse." It's a fair statement about the event she built. It's also only half the story of what happened in downtown Ferndale that weekend, because the DIY Street Fair wasn't the only fair on Woodward Avenue that weekend. It wasn't even the only one people meant when they said "the Ferndale art fair."
Across the street, on the other side of Woodward, a second event with a similar name and a different producer ran over the same three days. If you showed up expecting bands, food trucks, and 150 vendors and instead found quiet booths of fine art and a group of kids in puppet costumes, you didn't misread the schedule. You just parked on the wrong side of the street.
Two Fairs, One Weekend, Opposite Sidewalks
The DIY Street Fair ran on the east side of Woodward near Nine Mile, in the stretch between Nine Mile and Troy Street. Now in its 19th year, it launched in 2008 as a showcase for Ferndale's independent businesses and artists, and organizers say it typically pulls in more than 150 artists and crafters, 20 bands across a single Main Stage, and around 75,000 visitors over the weekend. That year's lineup included Shannon Shaw, Illuminati Hotties, and Ratboys, plus a Restaurant Row built entirely from Ferndale kitchens and a Marketplace where the handmade goods live.
On West Nine Mile, across Woodward, visitors found a different event entirely: the Funky Ferndale Art Fair. It was produced by a separate team, drew more than 140 juried fine artists, and leaned toward mixed media, jewelry, and computer-generated work rather than crafts and cover bands. More than 50 exhibitors were showing at Funky Ferndale for the first time. There was a puppet parade, built from drop-in puppet-making sessions the city held in the weeks leading up to the fair, and it ran on a tighter schedule than its neighbor: Friday 5 to 9 p.m., Saturday 10 a.m. to 9 p.m., Sunday 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., compared to DIY's Friday 6 to 11 p.m., Saturday 11 a.m. to 11 p.m., Sunday noon to 9 p.m.
The overlap in name and timing is confusing enough that DIY Street Fair addresses it directly on its own site. Its vendor FAQ spells out the distinction for anyone still sorting it out.
The Funky Ferndale Art Fair is not our event. This is run by different producers and has more of a fine art flair, artist booths only, no food trucks or bands. It's on West 9 Mile across Woodward. We are on East 9 Mile, on the East side of Woodward.
That's not a rivalry. It's two separate organizations that happened to have picked the same weekend and adjacent blocks, and the practical result was that "going to the Ferndale fair" required knowing which fair, which side of the street, and which set of hours you were actually working with.
What That Split Meant for Ferndale Residents
If you were after live music, a beer in hand, and dinner from a Ferndale restaurant, east side of Woodward was where you wanted to be, with a later Saturday close since DIY ran until 11 p.m. If you were bringing kids for the puppet parade or wanted to browse fine art without a band competing for your attention, the west side along West Nine Mile wrapped up earlier each night, including at 5 p.m. Sunday.
Parking got tighter than usual on both sides given the combined draw, and the two fairs together pulled a crowd that dwarfed almost anything else on Ferndale's calendar this time of year. Knowing in advance which event had the food and which had the puppets saved you a walk across Woodward mid-afternoon when you realized you were at the wrong one.
The Calendar Doesn't Stop When These Two Pack Up
Ferndale's fall didn't end when the tents came down Sunday night. This weekend brings the Harvest Festival on Livernois, set for October 3 at Witch House Tattoo, a smaller neighborhood gathering that trades the Woodward crowds for a single-block, single-day feel. Not long after, the city's own Ferndale Fall Festival returns to Martin Road Park, hosted by Ferndale Recreation with hayrides, pony rides, carnival games, and a trick-or-treat trail, the kind of event built for families rather than festival crowds. Later in October, the Downtown Ferndale Development Authority runs its own trick-or-treating evening at participating downtown businesses, extending the DIY weekend's storefront energy into an evening built specifically around kids in costume rather than vendors in tents.
Taken together, these events show a city that doesn't treat its biggest weekend as an isolated spike. DIY and Funky Ferndale open the season with size and noise. Livernois follows with something smaller and closer to home. Martin Road Park and downtown trick-or-treating close it out with events built around families rather than crowds. The texture changes block by block and week by week, and knowing that rhythm, not just the headline weekend, is what separates a resident's calendar from a visitor's itinerary.
If you've lived in Ferndale through a few Septembers, none of this is news. But if you're newer to the neighborhood, or if you spent Saturday afternoon wondering why the fair you found didn't match what a friend described, the answer isn't that Ferndale changed the fair. It's that Ferndale has been running two of them, on opposite sidewalks, the whole time.
For more of what's happening around town this season, Abby Kushner keeps a running guide to Ferndale on her neighborhood page, including the kind of local detail that doesn't show up on a festival poster.
