Iron City was a very complicated situation. The brewery was repeatedly bought out by people who wanted to make Iron City a national brand, competing with Budweiser. Each new owner wanted different things and yet had no background in brewing. Then there was the billing dispute over a 4 million dollar unpaid water bill.
I worked PotatoFest last year. It’s a fun day but you can NOT park anywhere near the place. Even we vendors had to take the shuttle.
I’m a little bummed. I was going to mention a small-town festival that I’ve always wanted to attend, the Moose Dropping Festival in Talkeetna, Alaska. Unfortunately, I just learned that the last time the festival was held was in 2009.
Last summer I attended the Apple Scrapple Festival in Bridgeville, Delaware. It’s a town of about 2,000 bracketed by its two major employers: Rapa Scrapple and the Purdue Chicken plant. The festival literally takes over the entire town, with carnival rides, food vendors, crafts, scrapple-related activities, live music, there was a surprising amount of stuff there, and huge amount of people show up; I’d say the town’s population easily quadruples that weekend.
Riverfest (May) and the Totah Festival (Sept), Farmington, NM
Aztec Highland Games and Music Festival, Aztec, NM
Deer Creek Fiddlers’ Convention, Westminster, MD
International Pancake Day/International Pancake Race, Liberal, KS
Flame Tree Festival, Saipan
Guymon Pioneer Days and Rodeo, Guymon, OK
Now-defunct events: Renaissance Faires in both Farmington, NM and Angola, IN, Gallup Celtic Music Festival, Gallup, NM
I’m sure there’s more, but this is all I can come up with right now.
I already posted this in the thread about strange museums, but it probably actually belongs in this thread. In conjunction with the Mustard Museum, Middleton, Wisconsin is holding its Mustard Festival tomorrow.
Pretty near every town around here has at least one; some have more than one. You can celebrate grapes, or wine, or mint, or being Italian, or let’s-everybody-have-a-yard-sale (more than one town now does this; there are generally also food booths and other miscellaneous commotion), or music of various types in various places, or artwork (again, multiple towns), or the Women’s Rights Convention, – I’m sure I’m leaving something out.