STREET OF EXTREMES: Last Thursday circa 2009. IMAGE: Darryl James

The fire dancers, the street musicians and at least one plastic jellyfish swinging from a very long pole converged at last week’s Last Thursday, the monthly street festival on Northeast Alberta Street that in recent weeks has become the subject of much hand-wringing at City Hall.

So, too, did a larger number of Portland Police officers compared with July, when Multnomah County health officials unintentionally provoked a national debate—and sparked calls for an anarchist-led protest—by shutting down 7-year-old Julie Murphy’s lemonade stand.

But despite promises of a raucous protest of Murphy’s ouster from the street fair in July—“The state will come, but we will NOT leave,” one such would-be protester wrote in an Aug. 1 email to potential supporters after July’s Last Thursday. “We will fill the streets with dance and revelry in the spirit of Last Thursday’s origins”—the Aug. 26 installment barely qualified as unusual or especially rowdy, at least by Last Thursday’s loose standards.

Mayor Sam Adams walked up and down Alberta Street until 10 pm, greeting Portlanders, talking with business owners and generally playing the role of the city’s police commissioner at the event. “Don’t let anyone on the premises with open containers,” was one of his messages for the evening.

The debate about Last Thursday’s future lives on. Long after the last portable toilets were hauled away, city officials and Last Thursday’s informal organizers continued to consider how best to balance neighbors’ concerns about safety and cleanliness with attendees’ desire to freely mill about the Alberta Arts District (sometimes late into the night and after having had too much to drink).

This summer, before the mayor approved the city’s budget for the fiscal year that started July 1, transportation officials wanted $25,000 in taxpayer funds to help pay for extra traffic control at the monthly street fair. At a time when basic services were being cut, financial planners with the city warned against devoting additional public money to Last Thursday.

Their caution now appears nostalgic. In August alone, the City of Portland spent an estimated $20,000 on the street fair, compared with about $10,000 per event in previous months. Commissioner Amanda Fritz says those costs were necessary to protect public safety. But she says the event’s supporters in the business community along Alberta Street, who this year formed the Friends of Last Thursday with neighbors, will have to shoulder the financial burden of the street fair next year.

One solution may be to require vendors at the street fair to file for a permit and pay a small fee to set up camp along the street. But that could be a tough sell. For some, vendor fees and a mandatory registration policy would go against the inherent weirdness and affordability of Last Thursday. Many vendors at the event are local artists or crafters who sell inexpensive trinkets like avocado-pit necklaces, which don’t fetch hefty sums.

“Not everyone can afford [to pay vendor fees], and some people are on a fixed income,” said Brandon Bigej, who was on the street promoting a nude art show. “People who are struggling artists and struggling musicians can barely make a name for themselves.”

Molly Pettit, a fan of Last Thursday’s informal qualities, says a permit process would transform the monthly gathering for the worse, making it more like Saturday Market. “Once that happens, Last Thursday is dead,” Pettit says. “It’s over. It’s Alberta Street Fair.”