After reading Pop The Cap this morning, we see that Charlotte’s Beer, Bourbon & BBQ Festival, held last Saturday on the Symphony Park lawn in wealthy South Park, didn’t go over so well. Seems that folks had the pleasure of long lines, unable to get beer and food with some even resorting to leaving and returning with smuggled beer.

Unlike other beer festivals (such as the one in October), this is not an event that is attended by different breweries from across the country, rather, it looks like the sponsors went to Costco and bought as many different beers as they could and set them up at different tables. Most of the good (ie: expensive beer) ran out early and therefore most of us were forced to drink Bud or Bud Light. 

Festivals always seem to go awry when outside hands are in the pot, so to speak. As PTC points out, we do pretty well in North Carolina with our beer festivals, almost all of which are planned locally, but the Beer, Bourbon & BBQ Festival is a standard event offered by the Moorea Marketing Group in Maryland, which holds the same event in other locales.

Sure, this one guy’s opinion, but that statement is enough for me to feel his pain. (By the way, even Moorea Marketing admits that some things weren’t well-thought-out.) Granted, this was a fundraiser for The WCD Foundation (World Congress and Exposition on Disabilities), but people should still get their money’s worth. If we were promised this, and ended up with Bud, we might be a little annoyed, too.

We realize that festivals are a lot of work, but there’s got to be some local flavor to a local festival. Or is that just a wee bit too obvious?