Something in the Water 2022: Vendor applications available

Calling all local business owners, Pharrell's Something in the Water music festival is looking for vendors and the application is available now. 

There are still several details that organizers have not disclosed including how many vendors will be selected. 

FOX 5 asked D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser on Friday about the vendors and whether the city made any specific requests.  

"We’ve made a lot of requests about getting the festival here. We know it will help us populate our restaurants, our businesses, our hotels, and we see it as a tremendous opportunity, so we’ll continue to work with them," Mayor Bowser said. "I think that they put up a portal so that people interested in getting involved can get involved." 

"It’s a great opportunity to be involved with local opportunities and kind of be reintroduced to a lot of our customers that haven’t seen us regularly in a number of years," said NeatMeetDC Food Truck and Catering owner, Nnamdi James Nwaneri. 

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Nwaneri told FOX 5 he had to scale back his business in the pandemic and is looking to apply for Something in the Water.

Since the festival takes place during the Juneteeth celebration, FOX 5 asked Nwaneri whether the festival or city should include a certain percentage of Black-owned vendors. 

"It’s a celebratory holiday where you know it’s the emancipation of Black people, so having Black vendors work at a celebration of Black people event, you want them to be celebrating, right? Rather than working," Nwaneri said. "That’s where my hesitancy falls a little bit but, you know the whole scope of the event is around Juneteenth, so it should [be] a percentage set aside for Black vendors and especially local Black vendors." 

CLICK HERE FOR SOMETHING IN THE WATER 2022 LINEUP

The Mayor’s Office tells FOX 5 "local" was very important to the festival organizers when it was held in Virginia Beach, and it’s very important to them in D.C. as well. 

For business owners looking for that portal to access the vendor application page, you can do so by visiting the "Something in the Water" web page. Scroll all the way down and click "Contacts." Then scroll down and click "Partnership Inquiries" and the vendor application page should appear

General three-day passes go on sale at 10 a.m. Saturday for $350. Tickets are expected to sell out quickly

The head of the Downtown D.C. Business Improvement District tells FOX 5 they are preparing for this major three-day festival to draw around 40,000 people downtown.

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