Me to Festivals - I Quit!

I had been looking forward to the San Francisco Street Food festival much like a 5 year old awaits their first superhero-themed birthday party. Pure glee at the thought and a bitter frustration of the days separating me from the glorious event. Great vendors I've been wanting to try, most doing a take on street food (Pizza Frita from Delfina), some native to St food and a few in between or besides.  Amazing food near my place - its an exhilarating thought. There was something more than just amazing food that Saturday, there were amazingly long lines of people, waiting for the food.  


Now in the aftermath of the event I learned a valuable lesson: I'm done with Festivals in SF. I've been to my share of these events and the more I go, the less I like being there. And "there" can be any where - this week it was the food festival, but this summer I've been to a boring craft fair, a pathetic music festival and a poor excuse for "Carnival." I'm over all of you - I quit!

All these poor experiences have similar downfalls: terrible (sometimes borderline negligent) organization, lackluster content and unending or unfriendly crowds - and for the music events - a lack of PA power.  .

Saturday, like many festivals, began the day with the fresh promise of providing funding to a worthy organization, La Cocina, featuring some adventurous food and bringing merryment to a rather serious block in the Mission. However, in practice, the promise dimmed to a very cool ember. It was an cold overcast day, the lines for the 15-odd food vendors were all on average 45 minutes long, some were shorter, some were over an hour. The food was ok, but trying to find the line you wanted to wait in while pushing through other hungry, hapless hipsters such as myself, was miserable.  We waited over 75 minutes for Poleng Lounge's Vietnamese style BBQ oysters with rendered bacon-scallion oil and lemon pepper sauce.  If anyone had these vittles, hit me up - I want to know what I gave up on.

Oh festivals - how I've tried to love you, to spread the love even by gathering groups to visit you, but you've let me down for the last time.  If you'd like to just pretend you went to the festival, which is my new methodology for living, just check out someone else's flickr slideshow: here is the link.