Discussions

All I gotta say is…. wow, the people they like their food  
Quite the home run and the kind we need a few more of in Westman. There's a moment when you drive by all the people standing lined up in the rain and think "dang, Westman folk sometimes like to complain about the weather but we're pretty darn resilient when we want something!"  
 
Okay a few more thoughts…  
 
-in my prev post i wondered if the event was better off earlier in the summer. That was answered.... based on turnout even during almost worst-case weather it looks like its perfectly fine as an almost-fall event  
 
-there’s a reason that events like this are held at larger facilities and not parking lots…. its that with no big field nearby to use for cars it's important that the parking lot is available for, well, parking The Vic Inn is an excellent local hotel and this isn’t a slag on them so much as the reality of the fact that that area isn’t setup for the scale of vehicle and pedestrian traffic that it saw. When I was in the area and driving down McTavish, cars were parked throughout residential neighbourhoods 4-5 blocks away. Because it's an area that was built without sidewalks, people (including a family with stroller and kids in tow) were having to walk for blocks amongst traffic down the middle of a street that already had parked cars crowding it out. What would that pedestrian/vehicle dynamic be like when 34th st and Victoria Ave are actually open to full busy traffic flow again? This might already be the plan for all I know but I hope organizers will dial it up next year and find a date that can work at the Keystone or Disc Centre, which are better setup to handle this kind of scale. The first year of an event can be a trial balloon of sort where you can make the case for getting creative with location to see how people respond to the concept, but with this kind of turnout you’d have a hard time convincing me that there aren’t enough dollars flowing to commit to a spot that’s better suited even if it costs a little more.  
 
Again, all just constructive criticism and I don't mean it to take away from what's a successful event. Its clear from the turnout that there’s definitely something here and if I’m adding one more perspective and a couple more cents then I’m doing my job

Heres the info:  

 
 
Side note, in case it comes up the answer is "at least twice" to the question of how many times have Brandonites frozen their knickers off in a hotel parking lot for a good time .....  
http://www.ebrandon.ca/photo.aspx?picture_id=9928

Just to expand on this...  
organizer later said that that number came after they "added up the food orders." I take that to mean that it was either 19,300 items sold or 19,300 orders since there's no way you could arrive at a hard attendance number from how many orders various people placed across various trucks considering the overlap. Doesn't change the thought that it was a very well attended/supported event and doesnt change the fact that anyone putting in the work to assemble that cast of vendors deserves a pat on the back for the work to make it happen..... but food (no pun intended) for thought