Festival in the Park, a long running festival in Roanoke City, is a junky, poorly planned piece of crap.
Today as I walked through the festival I couldn't help but think back to when I first went there in the early 1990s. At that time it was the must go to event of late spring/early summer. Tons of food vendors, tons of artists, tons of crafts, a good number of music/entertainment people actually wanted to see/hear, and it was also a very large event. Yet now, today as I walked along its path I noticed there are very few vendors there when compared to its older days, tons less food vendors in the food alley they set up, and an overall defeated air of a scaled back event.
I'm not just making observations, the once 10 day long event is now 5 days total. And in 2005 the fest posted losses-the Festival in the Park is barely an attraction anymore. And as a Roanoker who has been to the fest a good number of times in my life I would like to make some suggestions:
-Give the event a different theme each year and tailor entertainment and decorations to fit that theme. This gives it a focus, instead of having everything all over the place. It also gives people incentive to return each year, to see how the new theme plays out.
-Limit the family friendly shows on the main stage in the park to run only until 3 or 4 in the afternoon. I dispise the annoying playful singsongs of over sugared adults as they talk down to the little tykes, it makes me want to run from the fest as fast as I can.
-STOP with the annoying blue grass and country music. Knowing that is there KEEPS me from coming at certain times. Mix it up, get a rock band or two, get an R&B group, SOMETHING different.
-After 5 change the format, begin putting more adult entertainment like rock and pop bands on the mainstage. After 7, make it an outdoor night club: get a DJ, some bartenders with some nice, expensive “fancy” drinks, some cool lights, maybe even a bubble and/or smoke machine or to. The point in this is to make a place that people my age would want to attend, while also charging a decent fee for provided food and alcoholic drinks. Perhaps the fest could even get a radio station to underwrite some of the expenses for this outdoor nightclub.
-BETTER LAYOUT. The layout sucks beyond imagination, with the meandering trails snaking this way and that. Vendors put here, there, everywhere.
Alright, I'm said my peace and given my thoughts. But don't misunderstand me, I love the idea of Festival in the Park but I hate it in application, or at least the way it has been run the passed few years. Like many things in Roanoke I just feel like the festival has lost its sense of purpose and that it is losing the social significance it once had.
© 2006 A.T.L.