KCMax wrote:
And those are just weekend events, or for First Friday, only a night. I think he is talking about something more like Fringe Festival, which is a whole week, except more mainstream, that could become a big name event and attract people from outside of KC. He talks about how ski and resort towns have events like this.
It would be something geared more towards the Tommy Bahama wearing Baby Boomer crowd than the younger cool crowd, which means it probably won't appeal to most of you, but it could be something to bring a spotlight to KC, and more importantly, lots of needed economic activity downtown.
I'm liking this idea. It might be cool to maybe take it further, where it's not necessarily just about art (specifically, gallery type art), but a sort of harvest celebration of locally grown food, beer, and wine; local art and artists; local chefs; local film and music and theater... like two straight weeks of First Friday. Sort of a South by Midwest, but without the pretension.
And by "local" we could easily go as far as Omaha, Lincoln, Wichita, Des Moines, etc., really try to bring everything cool and interesting and delicious within about a ~3 hour drive to Kansas City for an insane two week festival every year. Just adding up the metro populations of the largish cities I could think of within a 3-hour radius nets 4 million people. I don't know if that's enough of a base to get such a thing kicked off (with the idea that it would eventually become nationally known / popular) but I like the idea.
I would like it a lot more if we had a much better transit system, though.
"It is not to my good friend's heresy that I impute his honesty. On the contrary, 'tis his honesty that has brought upon him the character of heretic." -- Ben Franklin