Virginia is for Bacon Lovers

Bacon Festival, Thank you!

Thank you to all those (which was apparently a lot) who had the brilliant idea to have a festival in the name of all things bacon, Bravo! Let’s do it again next year with a few tweaks.

Great weather!  Great Town!  Great Idea!  Great Support!

Greater the issues!

Being GREAT isn’t so bad!

Bacon Festival at 17th Street Farmers Market

In many ways this event was a huge success, huge!  The future meaty potential is endless. If we didn’t complain about it we wouldn’t be showing our love. At this point, it is well know tweaking needs to happen for next year, but, let’s be real, every festival and event needs constant tweaking each year, especially after the first year. We loved L-O-V-E-D the idea and we want it back bigger and better next year and every year after.

Do you think there weren’t growing pains for the Monument 10K as it doubled every year for like the first 5 years! Of course, there were and Sports Backers figured it out and so will you Bacon Festival.  Don’t be discouraged.  

Unless you can see the future, you just don’t know how many folks will attend.  However, as a beer and clearly bacon loving town, the future may have been in plain sight on this one. 

That is the thing about Richmonders we LOVE our festivals! We support them!  We want them ALL!  Then we want MORE! Then we complain and in the same breath beg you to come back next year. Because we are lovers and supports of our festival town we want everything to be perfect every time.  We know this is statistically impossible but we still want it.  

Every year, for every festival and event we will complain about the parking and lines. Much like we complain about the weather “it isn’t hot, it isn’t hot, it isn’t hot…why is it sooooo hot, you could fry an egg and bacon out here.”  You feel us, we know you do. It is our duty, our patriotic duty, as Richmonders to complain about the inevitable and uncontrollable-parking, lines and weather. We will loudly and repeatedly complain if one or god forbid all three get between us and our bacon.

We challenge you to name one event that parking and lines do not factor into the experience-Greek Festival, Broad Appétit, don’t get us started on race day traffic for both NASCAR and foot races, Hardywood 4 mile (they actually nailed the parking thing, thank you Hardywood), The Folk Festival, The Diamond (who are now using the Bypass Lane App for the food lines-check it out it is pretty cool). The list goes on and on. Over time these events have been tweaked to minimize those issues but they never go away.

Point is lines aren’t fun but they mean we are out in mass supporting our events and our town, and that folks is pretty awesome!

However, creating lines for lines sake is just darn ridiculous! (Cue more complaining) What was the deal with the beer line? 3 beer lines and 2 lines before you even saw the actual beer line. Really, if you think about it, it was more like 25 lines. Wrist band line, the ticket line, the 18 beer option lines, plus the cider lines plus the line you got in that was not really line. 

Seriously, that is too many lines. 

Since there was not a bacon beer and the first 30 minutes of the second beer line was spent intimately nuzzled directly next to the port o potties, we made the ultimate sacrifice and stuck with food only as you sadly could not enjoy both food and beer…pause for tear.

As seasoned festival goers and hardcore lovers of bacon we went early and it paid off. The buzz on this event was big and we didn’t want to deal with what approximately 83% (or more) of attendees experienced. Nothing, I mean nothing was going to keep us from the bacon. However, the 57 beer lines kept us from the beer. I know, we have already discussed that ridiculousness. The legend of the lines grows as the complaining grows. 

Even arriving right at 11am it was clear there was going to be a crowd. So we bellied right up to the first tent and over the next hour and a half were in beautiful bacon bliss. Items available were prepared in fun, inspired and creative ways. There were both savory and sweet interpretations and the portion sizes generous. We were pleasantly surprised that it wasn’t just bacon it was the whole delicious pig! Pig is good!

·       Bacon Fried Oysters with bacon dust and bacon tartar sauce by On The Rox---YES!

·       Shrimp, bacon and pork belly lo mein by Fat Dragon (liked it so much we had 2) ---YES!

·       Stuffed avocado with pulled pork by Casa Del Barco---YES!

·       Bacon S’more by The Jefferson Hotel---cute but not our thing.

·       Slider with bacon and a bacon wrapped jalapeño popper-popper was    fantastic!

·       Griddle cake by The Berkely Hotel---YES!

·       Pimento gouda bacon grilled cheese sandwich by Mosaic---YES!

Wish we could have tried more but our stomachs were at max capacity and the food lines were starting to form. If only we could have kept going we would have tried the bacon on a stick, chocolate covered bacon, bacon ice cream, bacon popsicles, bacon latte…who knew all you could do with bacon?  

Bonus fun of the day was how RVA showed its bacon love in t-shirt form. Next year there needs to be a Facebook page or Instagram page to capture all the cool tees! The Jefferson team were sporting shirts that read “Bacon… Transcending all Boundaries” and “Keep Calm and Eat Bacon…Constantly.” 

Other shirts we spotted…

·         VA is for Bacon Lovers (want this one)

·         Body by Bacon (don’t want this one or that body)

·         Picture of a frying pan full of bacon and eggs

·         Who loves bacon…this guy

That is just a small sample of the creative tees!

The venue needs tweaking but please don’t give up the 17^th Street Farmers Market, yet.  There is plenty of room there to make this event work. Like using the space taken up by the 349 beer lines. Please, repeat after me RIR is not the answer. RIR is not the answer. RIR is not the answer. Are we clear? RIR is great for the events it hosts but this is not an RIR event. If a new venue has to be sought out how about Browns Island, The Carillon, Monroe Park, The Canal Walk, Forest Hill Park, Byrd Park, Bryan Park, The Diamond, The Redskins training camp Park. There are many other spots before RIR. Can we fix Mayo Island, already?  

Bacon Festival, host a Happy Hour Cocktails and Glitter style. Invite those that organize the other festivals in town and get there feedback on making next year amazing! Come on festival organizers get together work out all the kinks leaving us with nothing but the weather to complain about.

A couple things we would like to see next year…

·       Better use of the market space.

·       Better vendor layout--there will be lines but they can be organized not  confusing.

·       Only food vendors, this isn’t a stuff buying event unless the stuff is bacon.

·       Parking Attendants to speed up paying for parking. The machine can only but do but so much. We would rather be in slightly shorter lines thinking we are moving fast than the guy next to us then one long line that doesn’t seem to move at all.

·       Photo contest for best t-shirt.

·       Peoples Choice voting…maybe the year after next on this one.

·     On the restaurant list have the item being served to decide if you even want to brave that line.

·      Water only stations or have all vendors sell water (for a $1.00 not more)

·      Seriously, the beer lines!

Thanks for an awesome festival; let’s make it even more awesome for next year!  

Cheers!

K&H