I've noted before that lots of social-thinking types believe art is good for what ails society (namely: stasia), and I agree. When it's good (and by good, I usually mean transgressive), it gets us considering things from new perspectives. Sometimes it just makes us happy. I'm not opposed to either outcome.

Anyway, I especially love when art takes to the street and actually intermingles with people, and that's what's happening this Saturday from 12:30 to 1:30 in lovable Kensington where three pillars of any community, creative design, bikes, and outlandish costumes will meet at the corner of Trenton and Norris Streets for the Kensington Kinetic Sculpture Derby. It is, as the official site says, "a design competition and parade celebrating art and human powered transit." It proceeds all the way down to Penn Treaty Park and back again, so you could pack a picnic if the weather's nice.

(While you're at the park, remind yourself why a casino belongs nowhere near there.)

Like the beloved Fringe Festival, it's an event that transforms the city, if only momentarily, into some scene from a sweet surrealist fantasy dreamed in the heads of local artists. Who could ask for anything more?

But wait, there is more! Hang around Trenton and Norris after the derby for the Trenton Avenue Arts Festival that locals Levanana Levandecker and Steve Hatch report will be better than ever this year. If you wander over to a Kenzo or Fishtown establishment to sip the new and wonderful Philadelphia Brewing Company's Kenzinger or Rowhouse Red, word has it that no one will stop you.

Sometimes you just have to bite the bullet and support the community.

Get out and check out the Fringe Festival over the next few days!

Can I speak in broad generalities for a minute?

I don't think it's a coincidence that so many artists are progressives.

Sure, the fact that so few of them have decent healthcare probably contributes, but I thinks it's more than just the Moore Factor that accounts for progressivism among artists. I think that art, when it's interesting, opens up the observer or listener (if I were feeling materialist, I'd say the arts consumer) to new and different ideas and sensibilities. Interesting art often encourages empathy or sympathy, really does reveal new points of view, sometimes even radicalizes audiences to outrage and action. Sometime it provides release in ways that are impermissable outside of art.