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I appreciate the apology, Ed.

I'm sure you and everyone else will be all over the logistics in the upcoming weeks, so I would like to concentrate my comments on the serious food error that would have gotten you shunned had this festival been held in NY. The Fest served only Heinz Yellow Mustard with Katz's pastrami!!!!!!!!!!!!

If there is a next time (which I hope there is), you must promise that Yellow Mustard will not be found within a 100 yard radius of Katz's pastrami, and that there will be tanker truck filled with Spicy Deli Mustard.

Thanks!

droostring:

As with most of the event, the parking refund was very well organized ;-) To get the refund, you had to drive out of the parking lot and then drive in and get the refund from someone at the entrance, rather than the exit). If you lived in Bizarro World, you would have known.

About an hour and a half into the event, the entire payment/scanning system went down, so nobody was able to purchase food. There was a 1 – 2 hour wait – about 200 people - on every food line (eventually they started taking cash).

Apparently, the event organizers had never heard of the concept of "math." They set the whole thing up in the Shoreline concrete snack area (which is about 50 feet wide in most places), with tents of food on both sides, and useless Comcast, Best Buy, etc. kiosks in the middle. If you HAVE heard of math and assume that a person in a line takes up 1 foot from front to back (and they likely take up more), and if you have a line coming from each of the tents opposite one another, you can have no more than 25 people on each line before the back of one bumps into the back of the other.. Now put a 10 x 10 kiosk in the middle, and you can only have 20 on each side without the lines bumping into the kiosk. Now ttry putting 200 in place of those 20, and you are about 180 short of space on each line. And instead of 1 line on each side, put 3 lines on each side -- you now have 1080 people curving randomly off of the back of the main lines in front of the two foods stands. There were no stanchions, no ropes, no barriers, just a big disorganized mess – it looked like the Republican party!

It was so bad that they finally gave in and started a line for refunds. It was right next to the ticket purchase lines, so as we waited for our refunds, we told the people not to go in and waste $35 per person – they could get 15 double-doubles at In-N-Out Burger. Some listened, and some people didn’t, even when I said “if you insist on wasting money, just give me $20 and you at least are $15 ahead.” (They were not amused, but I was.) Eventually, the refund line was very long, and the sales line began evaporating. And to the organizer's credit, they gave full refunds for both the ticket costs AND the $15 parking fee. So I will put 1 ipoint n the plus column for the organizers. Unfortunately, they have a trillion points in the minus column, so they have some catching up to do.