LONG BEACH - The Green Is Greater Festival, a day of music, art, fundraising and celebration "intended to foster unity among Greater Long Beach's often-fragmented environmental movements," will be held at the Gaslamp restaurant in Long Beach on Sept. 18 from 12-6 p.m. Admission is free.Intended to become an annual event, the first Green Is Greater Festival coincides with the Wildlife Conservation Board's grant of more than $5 to the Los Cerritos Wetlands Authority to acquire the 100-acre Hellman property in Seal Beach. The acquisitions will protect critical coastal wetland habitat, scenic features and vanishing remnants of California's wetlands landscape, environmentalists said. A variety of environmental groups have RSVP'd for the Green Is Greater Festival, among them Friends of the Colorado Lagoon, Compassionate Cuisine, El Dorado Audubon, the Los Cerritos Wetlands Land Trust, Friends of Long Beach Animals, Eco-Link, the Surfrider Foundation's Long Beach chapter and the Long Beach State Environmental Science and Policy Club. Environmentally-oriented groups, clubs and companies from Long Beach and surrounding cities are invited to set up booths - for free, table included - to distribute information, solicit volunteers and collect donations while bands play and arts-and-crafters peddle their items. Musically, the Green Is Greater Festival is headlined by Korey Dane, who just won the Long Beach Buskerfest on Aug. 28. Other artists on the still-incomplete bill include Sean Danson, Jenny Stockdale, the Potential Lunatics, the Evolution Theory, Heavy Water and Pete March. The principle fundraising activity is a 33/33/33 drawing (tickets: $5) in which the pot is equally shared among the winner, an environmental organization of his/her choice and the Egrets Not Regrets Scholarship Fund. Additionally, the Gaslamp will donate 10 percent of food and drink sales to attending organizations. The Green Is Greater Festival is organized by the Gaslamp, Heather Altman of the environmental blog EgretsNotRegrets.com and the online news and culture magazine GreaterLongBeach.com. The Gaslamp is located at 6251 E. Pacific Coast Highway in Long Beach. To reserve a table for the festival, e-mail EgretsNotRegrets@gmail.com.

********** Published: September 2, 2010 - Volume 9 - Issue 20