Time marches on in its unstoppable manner. Hours slip by, days change unlike your underpants, and invariably the months turn over.
It’s Oct. 1 and you are sitting all alone in your bleak room counting ceiling tiles and wishing there were more to count.
Your friends and all of their friends are at the bar getting drunk and hitting on one another but you’d rather gouge your eyes out than deal with the drunken masses tonight.
There is always the club, but seeing as it’s not college night and there would be no free beer to be had, you’d just as soon stay home.
Instead of ending your life in an act of boredom or going to the club, you do nothing all night long, loser. You watch TV, you avoid studying, you think about that girl in your art history class that doesn’t even know who you are – you know the one, with that cool hair – and you count the ceiling tiles … again.
Now that you know what your pathetic, meaningless and horrible first Friday night of October will be like, let me tell you what you should do to save yourself from this atrocious fate.
You, my friend, should go to the artistic gathering in downtown Johnson City known as First Friday. This ritualistic celebration of artistic prowess is held on Main Street from about 7 to 11 p.m. and has all the artsy goodness that you could possibly wish for.
From live music to professional galleries to art students selling their dreams on the sidewalk, First Friday has many attractions.
Among the professional studios open for viewing are the Nelson Fine Art, which displays everything from oil paintings to ceramic works, the 316, full of photographic expression and A&R Gallery with its cozy aisles of artwork.
Inside these galleries, you will usually find complimentary wine, cheese and veggies, not to mention the artwork.
Outside the lights and walls of said galleries you will find an array of young entrepreneurs setting up shop on the sidewalk and in the street, keen to get their artwork out there.
“The exposure is nice,” said Ericka Basile, who frequently sells her handmade purses and paintings at First Friday “I don’t really expect to make a lot of money.”
In addition to peddling her wares, Basile is also the president of ETSU’s student art club, the SPDA.
The Student Painting and Drawing Association will be having a sale this First Friday to help fund club activities. There will be many originals from members for sell at rock bottom, I-bought-it-on-the-side-of-the-road prices. A representative of the SPDA will be available to purchase funky fly representations of the ever changing ETSU art body’s work most of the night this Oct. 1.
People come to First Friday for a wide array of reasons, inability to deal with the club scene being one of them. Many of the art students come to check out each other’s work and give general support to one another.
“Johnson City is trying to do something for the art community,” said Rosie Sesler, an ETSU sculpture major. “I feel like I need to help support it because I am part of it.”
Laura Grant, the owner and operator of the 316 gallery, in fear that people are not attending First Friday for fear of having to be around skeezy art kids made the reassuring statement “I don’t have scabies.”
So whether you are sick of playing the Drink Until I Vomit game every Friday, or you want to check out what the art community of Johnson City has to offer, get out of your sad little room and pay a visit to the First Friday gathering this Oct. 1.

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