On Thursday night bright yellow flags will sprout in front of 40 venues as New Bedford's downtown celebrates an important milestone: the city's 100th AHA! Night.

AHA! stands for Art, History and Architecture, a celebration of what creativity has brought to the city's past, present and future. In its exclamation point, it also highlights glimmers of new understanding, the "aha! moment" of discovery that this magical night can sometimes bring.  
   
One of the art exhibits gracing the New Bedford Art Museum's main gallery during this 100th AHA! is a fascinating display of art made entirely from found objects, the recycled detritus of several generations given new life and meaning in sculpture and collage.  In many ways, the show is emblematic of how downtown itself, once the area's commercial hub, is reinventing itself as a local arts and culture scene that is the envy now of many older downtowns throughout our region.
   
This Thursday, arts and culture envoys from across the Commonwealth will descend on the city center to see for themselves what makes this little celebration so special. They will find something for everyone.  There will be a youth-oriented carving of 100 pumpkins at the New Bedford Whaling Museum, while a block away they will find the extraordinary second annual motorcycle show at North Water Street's Tatlock Gallery.
   
Peeking in the window, visitors will first see the 1930 Scott "Flying Squirrel," a durable piece of mechanical genius designed by Alfred Scott that endured in various incarnations from the motorized bicycle days of 1908 until its demise in the mid-1960's.  Those who wander inside, weaving their way through an all-star assembly of vintage bikes, will find in one corner a hulking black Vincent "Rapide," the first motorcycle to break the 150 mph barrier in the late 1940's.  The Vincent bikes, their massive motors doing double duty as the bike's frame, raced into popular lore as writers like Hunter Thompson mythologized the nearly identical "Black Shadow" as the thoroughbred of a mechanical age.
   
Sitting on the AHA! Steering Committee, I have participated in many debates about what AHA! is, how it works, and where it should go from here.  AHA! is a bit of a gallery night, sometimes for working craftsmen like one AHA! founder, John Magnan, who opens his studio both to potential purchasers of his one-of-a-kind wooden sculptures, yet also to inspire youth, as they watch his long fingers probe the grain of a gnarled piece of hardwood.  Thursday night, his studio will offer a retrospective of his work.
   
AHA! is a night to celebrate our cultural treasures; the Art Museum, the Whaling Museum, ArtWorks!, the Star Store and Gallery X among them.  In the basement of the Art Museum, we find a city show of youth art, as a new generation displays its vision of our often tumultuous world. It is a night of performance, too, when folk singers pack Cafe Arpeggio in sometimes standing-room-only shows. 
   
But I've learned from wandering downtown on AHA! second Thursdays, this monthly celebration -- like a magic trick -- is more than a sum of its many delightful parts. It defies easy explanation, and yet the good feeling shared by the crowds who have begun to throng downtown on these nights reminds me of "WaterFire" nights in Providence, where burning braziers of hardwood floating upon a reopened river have sparked a city revival.
   
This past Saturday, I began my day downtown with an invigoratingly dark roast of coffee at the bustling Green Bean Cafe, and after a day's work, visited the opening at the Tatlock, where hundreds of motorcycle aficionados came from all over New England to reminisce over vintage steel bloodlines.  Then, some friends who just moved from Mattapoisett invited me to their newly purchased condo on Centre Street, above another gallery.  The semi-retired builder and his wife poured me a glass of red wine, and invited me to their rooftop deck overlooking the harbor.  After a busy life, they have found on New Bedford's waterfront a restful retreat.  A gentle fog rolled in, broken only by a lone fishing boat motoring through the mist. 
   
It is hard to say for sure what our downtown's future will be, for certainly we continue to face all the challenges of economic development in an old urban center.  Some see AHA! as a potential engine in this context; I see it more as a measure of  "consumer confidence" in the city. 
   
This year, we have seen both more cultural diversity, with people representing every neighborhood in the city attending AHA! Night programs led by poet Everett Hoagland, film-maker Dana Rebeiro, and Quaker out-reach worker Greg Williams re-enacting the under-celebrated narratives of Frederick Douglass.  Just as importantly, we have seen more geographic diversity, as strong AHA! programming, a revitalized Zeiterion Theatre, and the opening of the Cork wine bar have brought our suburban friends from Westport to Marion back to downtown New Bedford in significant numbers.  Steady improvement in public safety -- including the recent redeployment of patrol officers in the quietly refurbished Compass Bank building on Pleasant Street -- should accelerate this important trend.
   
Eleven other communities around the state are now using AHA! as template and inspiration  in efforts to celebrate and revitalize their cities. Still, on the 100th AHA! Night, the most important thing to remember is that this is YOUR AHA! Night. Come see what downtown has to offer.
   
(Nelson Hockert-Lotz serves on the AHA! Steering Committee.)

Nelson Hockert-Lotz

Positively New Bedford. 

Nelson Hockert-Lotz writes about things going on in the city that you’re not going to want to miss.

View all articles by Nelson Hockert-Lotz