Ludington Oktoberfest Beer School Homecoming

[XLFD]

I got the chance to go to the Ludington Football Homecoming Game on Friday night with my daughter and we had about as good a time as you can have while your home team is getting beaten by the Fremont Packers, a one win and five loss team, in a humiliating fashion (28-0).  She was excited about the Homecoming King and Queen more than the football.

The Homecoming festivities continued at the high school with a yearbook signing afterwards and concluded the next day with the Homecoming Dance being held at the same place between 9 PM and midnight the next day, as this snippet from the LASD website calendar shows 

Both nights featured a large amount of high schoolers on the local roads and one would hope that they did not drown their sorrows of the football game on Friday night or engage in underage drinking during or after their homecoming dance.  But if you were out either night, they were noticeably driving throughout town celebrating the homecoming event.

But this weekend also featured another event involving a school of a different sort and mirth and merrymaking by students and people out for a good time.  This event was advertised in all of the various local tourist websites, as well as the local paper and was pushed by all of the usual characters in the Downtown Ludington Board (DLB-DDA) the Convention and Visitor's Bureau and the Chamber of Commerce.  This was Oktoberfest, which went from a one day event from this last year to a three day event this year. 

Like Ludington School's Homecoming events it started on Friday evening with a special event and continued with the big event on Saturday night.  Friday night featured a "Beer School" starting at 7 PM where VIP members could learn everything they want and more about beer, and one can imagine that there were lab exercises and experiments with beer-drinking that came with the learning. 

Saturday featured the main event, a bunch of music acts playing in the beer tent from 3 PM to 10 PM.  Sunday had some more beer served between 1 and 5 PM.  These are shown in the schedule below for this year's festivities. 

Both the "Beer School" and the Homecoming Game ended around the same time on Friday night, so there were a lot of youngsters walking along and driving on the road from the school football game and a fair amount of VIP ticket holders going to their hotel rooms at about the same time, possibly impaired with their beer learning.

On Saturday evening, you had a fair amount of Oktoberfests revelers driving about on the roads during the same time a lot of our kids would be on the roads going to or from the dance, or other places to show off their dresses and tuxedos. 

Both of the two events are set in their times by two of our local public bodies, the LASD Board and the Ludington City Council (usually via the DDA).  Does anybody else believe that these two events should be set on two different weekends, or do you think our kids with little driving experience and a lot of out-of-town beer swilling guests should be sharing the roads on the same weekend? 

[AQUAMAN]

Seems to me that a lot more people could be involved and attend both events if they were on differing weekends. Bad planning by COL/DDA imho. LASD had their Homecoming event planned far in advance. I would say though, when I was in school, it seemed to me Homecoming came a bit later in October too. An Octoberfest event, by it's very nature of being in October, could be anytime in the month. I also didn't understand the yearbook signing event now. I thought the yearbook was issued in the spring, April or May, when graduation is near, the school year's sports records, memberships in groups, pics. of everyone in classes and around the school, are all done, and people are signing goodbye and goodluck to their fellow friends and classmates. 

[XLFD]

LASD had their schedule and their last home football game scheduled at least in this spring, and there is no set dates for an Oktoberfest happening, though I believe they try to not coincide directly with the Frankenmuth Octoberfest, which happened in September 18-21 this year(http://frankenmuthfestivals.com/index.php/oktoberfest).  The last couple of years they have spent money to send Mrs. Tykoski down to Frankenmuth-- for research purposes, of course-- in order to make Ludington's Oktoberfest bigger and better. 

It worked, the three day event cost the DDA quite a pretty penny so far, which has its own millage and tax increment financing scheme (both funded by taxpayers) to shell out the big bucks. 

The yearbook signing also confused me in the same way, Aquaman.

[Willy]

Good points X and Aquaman. I agree these events should be on different days. Another thought is how can kids learn and understand about excessive drinking or even the fact that maybe they shouldn't consume alcohol at all when adults celebrate intoxicating drinks at a special "festival". Kids aren't stupid they know people are getting drunk and reveling over alcohol. They should rename the beer drinking festival something other than "Octoberfest" because they are not celebrating October. Frankly I don't know what they are celebrating.

[XLFD]

If Ludington's Octoberfest (aka music & craft beer festival) had a historic tradition and was sponsored by and paid for by local folks who ran it to make a profit (or at least a strategic loss) while catering equally to locals and tourists, I might disagree with you. 

But this festival has had a local history since way back from 2013, is almost entirely funded with public money, and cares little of profits as long as it brings in some tourists during our off-tourist season.  Hard to believe that our city council was prepared to disallow our merchants to sell booze on Sundays just a couple of years ago, and now pays to serve booze on this Sunday October afternoon.

Homecoming couples come down to the beach, downtown landmarks, and the Waterfront Park on Saturday afternoon and evening to get pictures taken; this year they had to worry about being photobombed by drunken tourists, and being aurally assaulted by funky music.

You will note that Ludington Fire Chief Funk was well represented in the bands this year, probably because the entertainment tent took up nearly all the parking by the fire station.

[julia rain]

Dance being held at the same plaas this snippet from the LASD website calendar showsce between 9 PM and midnight the next day,

Xtreme Antler

[Brad]

History repeats itself....?

[XLFD]

Oktoberfest and Homecoming are on the same weekend, but this year it isn't nearly as bad as it was in 2014 as to the times of the various events.  I do not know whether this was planned, but the Saturday events are staggered, the craft beer festival is a four hour affair between 2-6 PM, so anybody lit from the festivities will likely be safely gone by the time teens travel to the Homecoming Dance begins at 8:30.  Last night, I was a bit worried that the football game would be getting done around the same time the pub crawl was getting done, but I'm not aware of any issues.