Festival sets record for attendance

BANGOR – There are two ways to measure the success of an event, according to Heather McCarthy, coordinator for the 66th annual National Folk Festival.

“Attendance is certainly one way to look at [it],” McCarthy said Monday. “Another way is how much the audience enjoys the event.”

Done, and done.

The numbers are in, and this year’s festival attendance peaked at 135,000 people over three days, according to McCarthy, and if Saturday’s humid temperatures weren’t enough to keep the eatin’, drinkin’, dancin’ and bein’ merry crowds away, audience enjoyment was nothing to be concerned about.

“We’ve certainly accomplished our goals,” McCarthy said.

Attendance rates were up from last year’s record of 100,000 people. The rates were determined by festival organizers who used a combination of aerial photography, traffic on the shuttle buses and in the parking lots, and crowd density in comparison to the area of festival grounds per square foot.

With less than a week to go before the big event, organizers were still trying to raise the remaining $100,000 they needed for the festival. The final numbers will not be in until later this week, but McCarthy said the festival’s bucket brigade had a good weekend.

Seven people were removed from the festival grounds over the weekend, but only three were arrested, two for disorderly conduct and one on an outstanding warrant.

Uniformed Bangor police had a visible presence throughout the festival grounds, and a number of officers helped direct traffic on the busy main streets.

Although McCarthy noted there were no major mishaps during the festival, there were some speed bumps along the way. In addition to Saturday’s sweltering heat, festival officials had to deal with a no-show band and the late arrival of some custom-made sculptures.

Cape Breton Kitchen Party, a traditional Cape Breton music and dance ensemble from Nova Scotia, failed to show up for their Saturday performances because of problems crossing the Canadian-U.S. border. McCarthy couldn’t elaborate on the band’s inability to make it on time. The band did appear Sunday.

Four sculptures that were intended to stand at the entrance of the Bangor Waterfront did not arrive for the event’s opening. Instead, two of the kinetic structures showed up late Friday night and were installed on Saturday.

“Just to give people the feel of what they look like,” Art Morgan, Bangor civil engineer, said Monday.

City engineers hope to get the other two sent in and set up within the next two weeks. The four sculptures, which city officials previously had said would be in place by the end of July, had yet to be shipped by the first day of the festival to Bangor from Cape Cod Fabrications, the company that is constructing the sculptures. Cape Cod Fabrications is located in North Falmouth, Mass.

The city had to put extra pressure on the fabricators to get the structures sent by the weekend, Morgan said.

“We’re anxious to do things right,” Morgan said.

The sculptures are square columns that support a series of crow’s nest cables and wind-powered metal sails that rotate around the columns. The columns are lighted from within, with the words “Bangor Waterfront” cut out of the sides.

For three days, the waterfront was home to a record number of spectators, about 750 volunteers, 25 bands and 34 food vendors. By Monday, almost everyone had cleared out and the site was virtually empty while workers cleared away trash and packed up the tents.

Employees of Kabayan Philippine Foods out of Richmond, one of the vendors at the festival, were still on the waterfront Monday morning, finishing up from a busy weekend.

“I didn’t bring enough food,” owner Emily Tremain admitted Monday morning.

Tremain has sold her authentic cuisine at the Bangor State Fair and gauged the amount of food to bring based on that event’s daily attendance. She underestimated and was left with no supply and a huge demand at this year’s festival, her first.

“I felt bad about it,” she said about the shortage of food. It’s a good problem to have though, she admitted.

Also out on the waterfront Monday were crews from Bangor Public Works who were clearing away the remnants of an event that accumulates a lot of trash.

“It’s quite a mess,” Clyde Dutton of Bangor Public Works said.

Crews worked all night Saturday and into Monday picking up the trash. Employees of Custom Tent Rentals also were on site rolling up the large tents and clearing the site. Everything should be cleared away and back to normal by the end of today, McCarthy said.

The National wrapped up its final year in Bangor on Sunday, but organizers are planning to hold the American Folk Festival, a duplicate of the popular event, next summer. The National Folk Festival heads to Richmond, Va., next year.