Ladyfest

Planning meetings were held at Arrowspace, the ABC house, and Olympia World News. The festival planned over 70 events across seven plus downtown venues: the Capitol Theater, Midnight Sun, Arrowspace, Le Voyeur, Thekla, Olympia World News, and Praxis. Diverse workshops were free to the public and ranged from guitar basics to sex work, knitting, traveling solo, starting a business, dismantling racism, and car and bike repair. There were also sewing circles and printmaking demos at Community Print and the K Records big room at the 508 Legion Way building.

Mirah Yom Tov Zeitlyn hosted a vegetarian cooking workshop in her kitchen. Mirah often transformed her apartment into the Red Horse Cafe, where she hosted elaborate “secret cafes” with letterpress printed menus for current and future friends. Bands that played included The Gossip, Holly Golightly, Bratmobile, the Butchies, Lois, the Need, Two Ton Boa, Dos, Bangs, Rainbow Sugar, Vandemonium, Sleater-Kinney, and a country night with Neko Case and her Boyfriends. Tickets were sold through buyolympia.com, an online store started a year earlier by Pat Castaldo and Aaron Tuller as a way to amplify the art and music being created in Olympia. The fest raised over $30,000 after covering expenses, which was donated to Safeplace Rape Relief Women’s Shelter Services and the Pat Shively Memorial Health Fund. Pat Shively was a feminist nurse practitioner who founded the first women’s health clinic in Thurston County. She was also the mother of Allison, Cindy, and Molly Wolfe. Pat passed away from ovarian cancer in February of 2000.

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One of Ladyfest Olympia’s goals was to encourage other Ladyfests across the globe. Organizer Kanako Pooknyw issued a call to action for attendees to go home and do their own festivals. 2001 saw Ladyfests pop up in Glasgow, Scotland; Chicago, Illinois; Bloomington, Indiana; New York City, and East Hampton, Massachusetts. Twelve Ladyfests happened in 2002, and those numbers increased annually. 2005 saw 31 Ladyfests, including a second and final Ladyfest Olympia July 28-31.

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Jean Smith of Mecca Normal discussed another informal goal of Ladyfest- to move beyond the riot grrrl movement and the media’s manipulation and distortion of the scene. “Women aren’t a unified group with an agenda, per se… Having gone through the riot grrrl experience, based in Olympia, and gone through the media misconception as a musical phenomenon, to be used and shelved by the media, it’s good to see these same people are saying that there is still a career or community of people who aren’t giving up. That’s good to see women recreating a new voice beyond riot grrrl.”- Jean Smith