With a strong sense of music, art and local business, Eugene’s annual neighborhood festival, the Whiteaker Block Party featured all three of those characteristics packed together in three blocks of celebration.
Four years ago, the Whiteaker Cocktail Society started the Whiteaker Block Party as a way to for residents to get involved with the community. The result is a now-annual event where thousands of Eugeneans congregate on Third Street between Blair Boulevard and Adams Street from 1 to 11 p.m.
“It’s a Whiteaker driver event,” Anand Keathley, head chair of the Whiteaker Community Council said. “You can’t avoid the block party, in a good way.”
The event was free to all attendees, and all aspects of planning and executing the event were entirely voluntary. Playing into this theme, Keathley and the community council passed out free ice cream cones donated by Coconut Bliss and Prince Puckler’s.
Another large contributor to the event was the increasingly popular Whiteaker-based Ninkasi Brewing Company. The brewery opened up its tasting room and back patio to block party attendees, where musicians Tyler Fortier, Heavenly Oceans, Cambio and Man Overboard Pirates played in a Ninkasi beer garden.
“I think a lot of people come out whenever Ninkasi is attached to anything,” said Devin Driver, a University senior attending the block party. “There’s a really long line, but people are willing to wait.”

The block party featured five other stages set up along Third Street, for a total of 37 performances. The main stage across from Ninkasi attracted hundreds as six bands played throughout the day. The last act ended in an on-stage dance party with DJ Charles Thump up until the end of the block party.
“It’s free music; what more could you ask for?” Keathley said. “There’s also all sorts of other events.”
Off to the side of the main stage, fire dancers spun ropes, staffs and poi, balls attached to cords, to the nearby dance beats. Local Whiteaker artists showcased their work in a large display of art, and a fashion show took place on the main stage around 9 p.m.
The block party was an all-ages event, and like most summer events in Eugene, the town’s famous counterculture had a strong presence throughout the day, adding to the sense of community the cocktail society intended to create. Families, college students and baby boomers all bumped shoulders with the self-defining locals who frequent the once low-income, now up-and-coming neighborhood once nicknamed the Whiskey Flats.
“I’ve never seen such a variety of people,” David Skolnik, a visiting student from the University of Puget Sound, said. “It’s really something you can only find in Eugene.”
As the party wound down and the music acts finished playing around 11 p.m., lingering attendees continued the celebration in the street past 1 a.m. Eugene residents, University students and Whiteaker locals helped turn the Whiteaker Cocktail Society’s original idea of bringing a community together into a reality.
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