Oh wait, there's going to be no booze allowed this year? Nevermind.
Apparently, some people have been complaining about the drunken hordes of frat boys, Marina girls, and aging alcoholics who have descended upon the Festival year after year. The complaint says that drunken people take away from a "family atmosphere” and well; won't somebody think of the children? So a ban was pushed through, much to the chagrin of Festival organizers.
In today's Examiner, grumpy ole Ken Garcia claims that the ban was enacted in an act of revenge upon the Festival organizers by the Telegraph Hill Dwellers and their errand boy, Aaron Peskin, for a big fight over some property in North Beach (in short, developers were given permission to build housing, Dwellers complained, Peskin claimed eminent domain and the developers were kept from developing-- one of our favorite "School House Rock" episodes, BTW, was the sequel to "I'm Just a Bill" where Bill The Bill is stopped from going into effect when a politician declares eminent domain. We just loved that song "Eminence Domain Front").
Which maybe the case and considering how things work in this town, possibly true. On the other hand, the North Beach Festival does have a tendency to devolve into drunken rowdiness. And not just by us. People for the ban also say that this way the Festival will be less with the drunken keg party and more with the North beach flavor as apparently all the drinking makes it harder to tell the difference between the exact same vendor and artist at this fair as at other fairs. We'd also like to point out that it won't exactly be Disney Land out there-- you can still drink at the bars and there will be a section to drink at the festival, just not near anything.
Which means that if you want to look for us, we'll be the one's at the bar.
Image, bra, from TheTwins.org