For those of you wondering Boulevardia is going to be a festival this summer June 13 - 15 in the west bottoms that isn't just about beer. There is going to be food trucks, music, local vendors, a family fair, and even an eco-expo. The organizers are getting more and more information out each day as they continue to build this event!
Part of Boulevardia will be a beer and food fest called Taps and Tastes. This event will have 40+ brewers and 12 local restaurants serving amazing selections and talking with attendees. For a long time now Boulevard, Central States, and Boulevardia have been promoting this portion for when tickets go on sale. That sale started this morning at 10 am. This event is also where people decided to get ugly about all of this.
I had the pleasure of watching an exchange between Central States, Jeremy Danner, and a guy on twitter with a handle that something to do with a big head, and that's exactly what the guy had! The guy starts off trying to call a BUSINESS out on making revenue to ensure that it covers costs of the event. Then proceeds for the next hour to go back and forth being the Spanish Inquisition and indignant about how he perceived a lack of information. (Oh and he tried this morning to get tickets still and wasn't able to) Jeremy took the respectable route of take it or leave, there are plenty of people who will happily go and Central States bending over backwards trying to show the guy where his questions were answered.
Just an FYI by 10:20 AM all 2000 tickets were sold out. Twenty minutes!! That is INSANE! There were others still this morning that were very upset about site crashings and saying how horrible Boulevardia and Boulevard were for "not being prepared" and how this was worse than the 2012 Chocolate Ale "problem" (bitter much?). In my opinion what happened this morning is that people were reloading starting at 9:45 on the website and as the site changed content is when we got the error messages. However the website wasn't even the portion that hosted the ticket sales. It was on a third party website that was just linked from Boulevardia.
As Boulevard has transformed in the eye of the Kansas City area to more of a social and cultural movement and less of a business that makes really good beer, expectations for the brewery and what it provides have kind of gotten out of hand. This many people don't get this upset about a sold out concert or when a store sells out of a product. The good people of Boulevard, Boulevardia, and their sponsors have made their job harder because people now come to feel entitled to the wonderful events and amazing beer that they produce.
Lets take a look at the numbers. At 40 breweries and 12 restaurants for 2000 (number of tickets sold) people. This is 40 people per brewer and 167 people per restaurant. Even if you assume an average of 3 taps per brewer that is 14 people waiting in line for a 2 oz pour. I think Boulevardia was even stretching it to allow this many tickets to be sold because they feel that the quality of beer and the experience itself is going to make the juice worth the squeeze. I think they are going to pull it off and I am anxious to go as my tickets are my birthday present from C.
Where is the silver lining in all of this?
Despite all of the craigslist ads and social media fallout, Boulevardia will be hosting a three day extravaganza that you should all come out to even if just to the General Admission portion that will still have great food, great beer, and fun for the whole family, not to mention support local businesses that will be there. This event keeps growing every day as new things are added. I am excited to see what live music is brought in and a list of all the food vendors that will be there. If you didn't get a T&T ticket or just want to have a good weekend, go buy your GA ticket for only $10! Or maybe look to volunteer and have good time and get a shirt for free!
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