In the last week a lot has been written on the local blogs about how bad the Salisbury Festival was. I don’t know if they have some sort of animus against the Salisbury Chamber of Commerce or just like to whine about how bad downtown Salisbury is. I was there on Saturday and pretty much enjoyed myself. On Sunday I went back to work one of the carnival ticket booths, which was interesting.
Obviously things can be improved. My guess is that a lot of the gang trouble occurred after dark, and only Friday night were there events scheduled after 5:00 (along with the carnival rides on Saturday night.) My suggestion would be to keep the events that are done after dark in one place, rather than as spread out as the Carnival parts are from the stage side. If you can’t keep the events in a tighter radius, perhaps there needs to be a cordoning off of those areas and corridors between. Maybe the food vendors need to switch places with some of the carnival stuff.
Personally, I didn’t think parking was bad at all, but I did arrive pretty early on Saturday morning and before the start of the carnival rides Sunday. It may be that spaces are tough to come by on Friday night. I suppose that one suggestion I might have in that regard is scrubbing the sparsely attended mini Grand Prix and allowing people to park in Lot 10. I did go see the Grand Prix races and was not all that impressed with it.
I actually enjoyed the car show and walking around many of the booths – fun to see the politicians out in full force. As far as the “sex toys” booth, I was more under the impression that they sold lingerie and such. Yes, it seemed a bit out of place but it was something that you could choose to ignore. Seems to me they were fairly close to the table the Democrats had, which was appropriate to me in some strange way.
So why do I get the feeling that some of my fellow local bloggers and nabobs of negatism were ratcheting up the no votes on the Daily Times poll? I mean, does Salisbury have a problem with gangs? Yes. Were there many incidents occurring during the time I was there that I was a witness to? No.
Like it or not, holding the Salisbury Festival downtown is going to be a draw for some of the shadier element that happens to live close by in housing that they can afford. That’s not the fault of the C of C. If security is an issue, there’s surely improvements and changes that can be made. Otherwise, attendance will eventually dwindle and the event will die a natural death because of lack of sponsorship.
With the problems besetting events in just the past couple years I’ve been here (like losing the Fireman’s Muster, the Christmas lights, and after the weather debacle this year, possibly Pork in the Park) we should do our best to maintain the little things that improve the quality of life here in Salisbury. Let’s not shelve the Salisbury Festival, let’s put our heads together and try to make it better.
