Normally my fellow directors and I meet at Irish Fest HQ early in the morning around a big conference table covered with coffee cups and paper. And it's good and productive...as productive as you can be at 7:00 on a Friday morning anyway. But to really get a feel for how everything is going to lay out, sometimes you just have to be there.
Yesterday evening we met down at the Irish Fest site, specifically the new part of our site, Washington Square park. We met to figure out how best to use all our new green space and get a lay of the new land. I'll tell you, this is going to be really nice. The Boulevard Stage will be scootching north aways so the park will be alongside the stage. You'll have new places to eat and drink, new room for the kids to play, best of all more room to spread out and enjoy the fest.
We heard from some people last year that we'd outgrown Crown Center, that we had to move. I had one guy who e-mailed saying that he'd never come back as long as we were in Crown Center, so we'll all miss that guy, I guess. But I'm telling you, the changes we've made and will be making are going to keep us happily at home in Crown Center for years to come. With plenty of room.
Your Guide to the 17th Annual Kansas City Irish Fest at Crown Center. www.KCIrishFest.com
About Me
- Danny Regan
- Danny is a founder, past president, and creative director of the Kansas City Irish Fest. He lives in Kansas City, Missouri, the greatest city in America. He's authored Tir na Blog since 2006.
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5 comments:
Are you using all of Washington Park?
Is that about twice the space?
Looking at google maps of the space, I see the image was taken with Irish fest set up, cool.
No, we're not using all the park, but a fair chunk of it. And we're adding a sizeable new piece of Grand Boulevard, too by moving the stage back. You'll love it.
Can we play on the statue?
I just did the Google "Street View" thing myself. Jaysus, that stuff is scary. Who got paid to do all that? I mean... you can move the 'little man' just 20 feet and get a completely different 360 view every 20 feet.
My guess would be that the stage is going to be about even with the blue bus stop pavillion right about 100 yards north on Grand.
That would be perfect!
The SHADE on the street at that point later in the day will come in
real handy.
One of the weird things last year is that while it wasn't even that hot people just didn't want to sit in the sun if they could avoid it.
The proof ( and a view of exactly what the late-day shade is like farther down Grand ) is in the video of "The Fuchsia Band" shot by Arkansan Hank Hogan of the opening performance on Friday afternoon last year.
That video is HERE on YOUTUBE...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9FyMeTNx3Y
About 20 seconds into the video Hank raises his camera tripod and pans away from the stage to the seating area. Notice that while there was certainly a good crowd... NO ONE wanted to sit in any seat if the sun was shining on it.
If you 'freeze frame' the video right after that crowd pan-shot you can clearly see that at that same exact time ALL of Grand BLVD down there by that bus bench is completely shaded by the trees of Washington Park.
There's nothing you can do about the mid-day sun but for late in the afternoon the sooner the entire seating area is shaded the better.
Fair play!
It's going to be GREAT!
After doing the Google 'Street View' thing something tells me that one of these days ALL of Washington Part is going to be part of the Kansas City Irish Festival. It's just too perfect.
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