Diane Long has an article about yesterday's Mayor's First Day Festival that took place at the Gaylord Entertainment Center. It sounds like this whole thing has grown beyond the capacity of the GEC--well at least the concorses that are around the arena. Apparently, I'm not the only one who things so...
''There's too many people in too small a space,'' [[Teresa] Allen said as she left the GEC and headed for the park. ''It's a wonderful idea, but it's poorly executed. Why not open the floor of the arena, both upstairs and downstairs? Spread it out.''
I have to agree with Ms. Allen, but I wonder something--if they weren't giving away the 7000 free backpacks, how many people would have really turned up for this thing? I can tell you from being there, that there was a huge throng of people there to start with but around 3:30 or so, it had really cleared out. Basically once the backpacks were gone, so was a majority of the crowd. Which just proves that old adage--people love getting free stuff. It doesn't matter what it is, even.
And don't get me wrong--I think it's great that we're getting kids excited about going back to school. I'm sure that it's a great tool that helps get the year off on the right foot. But they need to think a bit more about the logistics of the event for next year or maybe consider opening the entire arena so that it's not a crushing throng of people.
But here's the part of the article that I found the most ironic: "
It was [Nashville mayor Bill] Purcell's idea five years ago to celebrate the start of schools with a one-two punch." Yeah, I certainly was on the receiving end of several of those
one-two punches inside the Scooby Doo outfit.
posted by Michael Hickerson at 8/16/2004 08:37:00 AM |
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