Whether and however to weather the loss of our Moon Winx | MARK HUGHES COBB

Many moons ago, outdoor music festivals touched down in even modest municipalities, like that magic one up the highway, and in our own Druid City.

Tuscaloosa ran slightly ahead of Birmingham in outdoor-show boom, roughly '80s to early 2000s, collapsing under weight of wayward weather, rising costs in a sagging economy, and competition which, in the grand American way, grew bloated, corporate and endless, all the while sucking the life out of smaller homegrown parties. Megaliths thrive thanks to non-compete radius clauses, and specific gravity, such as South by Southwest, Coachella, Bonnaroo, Lollapalooza, and of course the venerable New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, circa ... 1970? Is that long enough for veneration?

When will we learn, from concert promoters, from Lex Luthor, and 'Nam, that condensed, capracious power wreaks havoc? "Dynamic pricing," anyone?

Our CityFest, which evolved into International CityFest and Weindorf when joined with Mercedes Benz, began modestly in 1985, a party celebrating street renovations. Folks having a fine time grew greedy for more. So CityFest came back, expanding with years, clambering up and down the calendar:

• Can't be a football weekend. Folks in bars won't hear music, unless it's jukebox bands cranking "Sweet Home Alabama," "Brown-Eyed Girl," and "Mary Jane's Last Dance" at least once per set.

• Spring and fall lose potential student audience, with dead weeks, A-Days, graduations and other holidays.

• Mid-summer student numbers decline vastly. Late August, when they return, remains beastly hot.

• Then there's rain. And cold. And cold rain. And ordinary non-summer heat. Typical Bamalama days, acres of tarmac, and too-few tents means, um, healthy beer sales, but a swelter like being shoved under a damp dog blanket discourages those who didn't buy in advance, as Tuscaloosans typically don't.

Though CityFest was putting on a show as part-time endeavor — Birmingham's City Stages began with a substantial foundation — essentially building an aircraft as they flew, Tuscaloosa enjoyed lovely shows, with acts including Willie Nelson, B.B. King, Wilson Pickett, Martina McBride, Kool and the Gang, Little Richard, the O'Jays and more, including regional bands under the Weindorf tent, or elsewhere aside from two side-by-side mainstages.

But weather. Seems to be everywhere, outdoors. Takes its toll on things left out, standing.

More: Where will the Moon Winx go? Iconic sign removed after lodge closed down

CityFest closed after 2005, a commendable 20-year run. The Tuscaloosa Amphitheater, sketched in 2003 as part of riverfront development plans, gave hopes. But aside from a one-day 2019 Bicentennial Bash, featuring Jason Isbell, St. Paul and the Broken Bones, the Commodores, Blind Boys of Alabama, and Moon Taxi, fest hasn't happened. Even that free, gold-packed lineup couldn't draw a full house, because ... weather.

The Druid City Arts Festival was conceived as a music festival with art. As Tuscaloosa Tourism and Sports, then the city of Tuscaloosa, took reins, it grew popular, but with just one stage, it's really an art show with music. As such it's closer to Northport's Kentuck Festival of the Arts. Even though formed around a core of folk, outsider and visionary artists, Kentuck's tree has been deeply enriched by roots-based music.

Numerous others have tried crawdad fests, or other smaller-scale music events. Most sputtered.

TTS thought to fill gaps with its Druid City Music Festival, 18 months in development leading to two days in late August 2019 slammed by, shockingly, weather. Even with Big Boi, Lee Bains III and the Glory Fires, Blackberry Smoke and others, rain and high winds washed it out. Though we can also partly thank the pandammit, DCMF Round Two has yet to surface.

Each learns from predecessors. Picking the all-important date was high on DCMF's list, as was seeking acts at a budget to keep ticket prices low: $78 for a weekend pass. Coachella passes for 2019 started at $429.

DCMF committed to its branding. Our love for the Druid City nickname, despite no links to ancient Celtic religion, aside from veneration of oaks, speaks to the nature of Tuscaloosa, which is ... what, exactly?

What does Tuscaloosa look like to you?

In a column 20-ish years ago, I noted a City Stages extra Tuscaloosa should consider: art gates. Creatives were commissioned to craft fanciful entryways, drawing from the Magic City. (Origin of that nickname: The prevalence of limestone, coal, and iron ore, which could be alchemized into iron.)

Some thought I was contrasting unfairly with Birmingham's event, its full-time staff and board, though all I meant was I'd like to see what artists would cook up if charged with the concept: "Picture Tuscaloosa."

What warped mirrors, unending wardrobes, standing stones, wormholes, 9 3/4 portals, upright goalposts or ribs slashed across coats of arms would shimmer to life? Public art. You know, like the city's gradually accepting.

When The Tuscaloosa News staff designed "signs of hope" for our 2011 Christmas parade float, we cut and painted visions cutting through the murk of post-tornado suffering: The Bama Theatre marquee. Taco Casa's cactus. A Krispy Kreme Hot Now ring. My first thought was Alberta's Moon Winx sign. People kept asking if it survived, if it still shone. As power crackled back, so could we.

Bo Hicks, a dude continuing to make us all cooler, picked up that sign — literally, he found a discarded piece of our float — and gave it prominence in the tap room at Druid City Brewing Co. A grinning crescent moon image glows from DCBC's logo, its labels, its glasses. In DCBC's newly expanded quarters, still in Parkview Plaza, the band space is called the Moon Room.

Glenn House's art, realized in day-glo paints, turned into a towering neon wonder that's been depicted on book covers, in art photography and numerous other re-interpretations — the DCMF logo paired bookending, smiling crescents — for more than six decades. It illuminated and greeted Tuscaloosa. It speaks Tuscaloosa.

More: Family of Moon Winx artist Glenn House wants to know where the sign will glow

So when the Moon Winx sign vanished last week, not-so-magically carted off, taking by surprise even Kip Tyner, Alberta councilman, folks raised up and righteously roared. Where's our moon, its grin, the blue-eyed wink?

What happened to the sky?

From UA, Stillman College, Shelton State, with our growing tech, engineering and auto-making industry, our deep and dense greens and blues, our writers, artists, actors and musicians, our sometime-predilection for the somewhat-mystic — It's not just we believe in Alabama ghosts and Jeffrey, but we think wearing a certain shirt, doing laundry at the right time, or speaking a key phrase can trigger a turnover or touchdown — I think of us as the Magical Realist City. Magical realism, in art and literature, refers to indefinite lines between what's strictly real and what only seems; where seams blend disparate patchworks. Liminal, luminous space.

My Druid City might not be strictly yours. My Druid City is the Bama and Hot Now, spilled bourbon and crispy leaves as a loudspeaker voice echoes across tailgates, yes, but also tiered homes, lakes and rivers, that spillway we definitely weren't supposed to know about, much less clamber down to and jump off. The people we broke those laws — more like suggestions, right? — with, some gone now, those also determined to carve out places of their own from what's left, the raw material. Nights when the star-speckled vault seemed not enough and too much, uncontained, when blood beat a pulse to chase the wild world.

There are folks who don't love football. Even tragic hipsters will sometimes admit they don't always crave Archibald's. Some have no idea the Bama's in 300-days-per-year operation.

But no one won't miss the Moon Winx's sly physiognomy.

Where will it rise again? As a piece of private property, it's of course game for sale.

But Glenn's glowing grin grew greater than itself. It's a daydream of a night vision, turned magically real.

And this sign belongs back home.

Reach Tusk Editor Mark Hughes Cobb at mark.cobb@tuscaloosanews.com, or call 205-722-0201.

This article originally appeared on The Tuscaloosa News: How will we weather the loss of our Moon Winx? | MARK HUGHES COBB