The announcement of the reiteration of the Fry Street Fair, a once-beloved annual event right next to the University of North Texas that was discontinued in 2007, has been questioned on social media after organizers' posts about the new event started popping up on feeds in the past few weeks.
Fry Street Fair 2.0 — though scheduled for April 27-28 — came as a surprise to most longtime Denton residents and UNT alumni. In fact, in the past week, locals have taken to social media to call it a “scam” because the website information does not mention live bands and uses the iconic name to promote it.
“You've poured your heart and soul into something, and then they don't believe you,” said Andrew Saunders, owner of Dicks Dirty Bar, who is organizing the festival. “I've put in a lot of hours and effort, and I've had a lot of sleepless nights.”
Fry Street Fair was a mostly annual event in the early 1980s to 2007 as a tribute to what had become Denton's counterculture spot for students, hippies and locals. It was originally created and organized by the Delta Lodge, a fraternity-like organization that it has been synonymous with Fry Street Fair since.
Saunders believes people started calling it a “scam” because of miscommunication about the event, specifically the wording of the pre-ticket registration.
He said people assumed the festival was offering presale tickets, rather than pre-ticket registration. But what went live online on Monday was a signup to receive notifications about when presale tickets are available.
Due to deadlines, Saunders said they had to go live with the presale registration website this week.
The full website for Fry Street Fair 2024 will go live on Monday and will include a lineup, according to Saunders. The website says presale tickets will be priced at 50% off the “at the door” price. There will only be a limited number of presale tickets available, and those will be sold first come, first served.
Alexis Anglin
“We didn't put out presale tickets,” Saunders said. “We didn't do anything like that. It was just a registration to get the Fry Street Fair price."
Locals should expect three stages for live music, local vendors and artists, along with food and drinks.
Saunders said the music lineup is still being sorted out due to contracts but will feature local bands from various genres, including alternative indie rock and even country.
Saunders' version of Fry Street Fair, he said, is more about appreciating Denton's music scene. While much of the previous events featured more hardcore and punk rock bands, Saunders wants to bring more variety and showcase Denton's rock artists, but also the indie, country and songwriters that make the scene unique.
He said locals can also expect to see bands that played at the previous Fry Street Fair.
The idea of bringing the beloved festival back occurred when Saunders said he had brought it up with other Fry Street bar owners and talked to customers about why no one had put on the festival anymore.
Saunders received feedback saying there were issues in logistics within the city and UNT, and that nobody wanted to deal with them.
In this process, Saunders did connect with former Delta Lodge members. He couldn't reach them immediately, so he turned to social media and posted photos from previous Fry Street Fair events on Instagram. That strategy worked.
About three days later, Saunders said the former Delta Lodge board of directors president contacted him, blessing him to move on with the festival.
Since then, though, Saunders said, there has been mixed reaction from Delta Lodge members.
So, what was Fry Street Fair?
According to the North Texas Daily, David Biles and his two Sigma Alpha Mu fraternity brothers started the Fry Street Fair in 1980 and had no idea how successful the festival would become.
In 1986, Sigma Alpha Mu encountered a problem and lost its charter. A year later, the independent fraternity Delta Lodge was created and kept the fair going.
Due to the festival's popularity, the event’s location moved throughout the 1990s.
Meanwhile, the Delta Lodge's Victorian-style house, at the corner of Fry and Oak streets, burned in October 1995 in an electrical fire. It was nine long years before the fraternity house was rebuilt and lodge members moved back in.
In 2002, Delta Lodge's fair drew about 20,000 people to the area. Later that year, after receiving numerous complaints from residents and police about public drunkenness and vandalism, city officials told the group that they could no longer hold a fair attended by that many people on Fry Street.
In response, in 2003 and 2004, members moved the fair to Dallas' Deep Ellum, with disappointing results.
In 2005 and 2006, a scaled-down version of the fair returned to Fry Street. In 2007, it was hosted at the North Texas Fairgrounds in Denton.
A founding member of the Delta Lodge told the Denton Record-Chronicle in 2007 that the fair had been losing money and attendance for several years, and the time had come to end it.
Also that year, Delta Lodge members moved out of the fraternity's house, and the organization sold the building.
"We just see this as a really good time to reevaluate what Delta Lodge is all about," Todd Kaastad, a Delta Lodge founder, told the Record-Chronicle in 2007. "It's called 'Delta' for a reason — it's about knowing to accept when change is necessary."