Man, I got some complaints to air out about the way the 2010 Monterey Beer Festival was run. First off, we spent over an hour in line. By the time we got inside the gate, the event was 20% over. Apparently this is a common problem every time this event has ocurred. There were other gates open, but nobody from the event staff bothered to mention that to the main queue until we were almost inside. Further, before the gates opened, the entrance area was a complete mob scene with zero organization. So where do you suppose the "Will Call" window was? That's right- buried behind the mob. So the Will Call line (where I picked up my tix, of course) had to start out in the friggin' street and then cut through the main queue/mob. It was a complete cluster fuck.
My next biggest gripe is that the event web site listed over 100 brewery participants. I didn't count, but there were probably actually between 20 and 30 in attendance (and closer to 20 than 30). Now I've helped run beer festivals before and I know it's not uncommon to have some no-show breweries. But 70+ no-shows? That means the promoters didn't actually have committments from all the breweries they claimed they did. That means they (in essence) defrauded the ticket purchasers.
So, because they only had 20 or so breweries but sold probably 4000 tickets, that means almost everybody ran out of beer by 3:30. This at an event that was scheduled to pour until 5:00. So between getting in the gate an hour after the taps opened to running out of beer an hour and a half before the festival was over, many (if not most) attendees had about 2 hours to sample beer at an event that was 4.5 hours long. For $35 a ticket. Unfucking-believable.
There were other issues as well (plastic cups? Give me a break
), not nearly as frustrating, and considering the weather was great, the bands fun and the crowd well-behaved and we did drink some good beer, the day wasn't a total loss. But this event has great potential and could be MUCH better run. I wrote the promoter and told him so, too.
