Jeff Spevak

@jeffspevak1

Friday’s East End City Celebration is the first of three Friday-night summer parties that are downsized versions of a longtime downtown event that ended last summer.

“It is the reincarnation of the East End Festival, although we don’t quite use those words yet,” said organizer Michael O’Leary, owner of Temple Bar and Grille, right in the midst of the event.

The free festival, which starts at 6 p.m. and goes until 11 p.m., is on East Avenue, which will be closed off between Gibbs and Scio streets. Rather than five stages, as the East End Festival boasted, this one will be limited to a single stage at East and Scio. O’Leary called it “The perfect size.”

Two more festivals are scheduled for July 15 and Aug. 19.

While the old East End Festival drew an estimated 6,000 to 7,000 people, “we don’t expect anywhere near that crowd,” O’Leary said. “One stage will not draw the kind of crowd that five stages got. If we get, 2, 3,000, we’ll be thrilled, I think.”

Three local bands will be playing: The Dave Matthews Band tribute Big Eyed Phish, the Grateful Dead-ish Into the Now and The Dirty Bourbon Blues Band.

The event will also have food trucks and a craft beers area on Swan Street.

“That’s what we heard big time last year at Party in the Park,” said O’Leary, who also helps organize that event. “Where’s the craft beer truck?"

JSPEVAK@gannett.com