Fest Town

According to a study by The Urban Institute in Washington, D.C., our town ranks number three in the nation for festivals, fairs and outdoor events. We pull up behind only Columbus, Ohio and Austin, Texas and just ahead of Milwaukee, which seems to me to have a festival about every twelve minutes. Our cross-state neighbors in St. Louis trail along at number fifteen. Slackers.

I knew about this prestigious ranking last week, when the author of the story that ran this morning in our local paper telephoned my colleague Keli O'Neill Wenzel as we sat in our employee lounge on the 38th floor of the Irish Fest HQ building. Keli is a thoughtful and exceedingly intelligent young woman and gave an insightful, erudite, enlightening response to the question "why do we have so many festivals?" Her printed quote was, in its entirety, "it's the thing to do." Which is one of the many reasons we love reporters at Irish Fest.

So we're number three as a festival city, which I think is pretty great. But the larger questions are, where does the Kansas City Irish Fest rank among our town's plethora of fests? And can you say "plethora of fests" five times fast? The answer to at least one of those questions will come in the next few weeks when the results of the Kansas City Convention & Visitors Association's Visitors' Choice vote come in. You'll find out first, right here in Tir na Blog.