Chinga talk
Marion enjoyed its 11th Chingawassa Days in June 2007. This annual festival has become one of the highlights of the year, and a great selling point for those promoting the quality of life in our town. Even though everyone has some idea what the festival offers, you can't really know what goes into staging the event unless you have been on the Chinga committee. To answer questions and clear up areas of confusion, Pete the Chingawassa Rhino has agreed to respond to a number of questions. The issues and Pete's responses will be presented in a series of columns the next few weeks.
Dear Pete: Attendance during the day Saturday, and to some extent on Friday night, seems to be dropping off. Why is this?
Pete's answer: Well, now you've got Pete scratching his little Rhino head again. Attendance at events does seem to fluctuate from year to year and, of course, is affected by things like weather, competing events, and the popularity of the Saturday night band. If something like a wedding of two local young people is scheduled on the same weekend as Chingawassa, there can be a noticeable drop in attendance at festival events. If the weather is unbearably hot, or cold and rainy, it will certainly impact whether or not people come out during the day or stick around in the evening. When the Chingawassa committee books its bands, they sometimes hit a home run, and sometimes just manage to get a hit. Depending upon the popularity of the band, you may notice a difference in the crowd at the park. By the committee's best estimates, the largest crowd to ever attend a Chingawassa concert was just a little more than double the size of the smallest. The average is somewhere between those two extremes.
The '07 festival was one of the best attended ever! The Friday night ultimate Elvis contest packed the Marion High School gym, and the MNB barbecue attendance was up substantially from the year before. The Saturday evening concert was one of the top two (it's hard to tell exactly whether it's the highest attended or the second highest) in the history of the event. The Chingawassa committee would love to see attendance on Saturday night grow every year, and is making plans to present a weekend of outstanding entertainment that will pull in more people than ever, but also understands that from year to year there will be fluctuations. But, as for attendance dropping, it just ain't so!
