Monday, November 10, 2008

Missed Opportunity?

While sipping my coffee on Saturday morning, I came across a snippet in the DB on the Ganesha High School Bandfest. Anyone catch it? It apparently started at 9:30AM and was running north on Fairplex drive, from Holt to Ganesha High School. I don't remember all the participants, but I think Ganesha, Pomona, Garey, and even Santa Monica high school were competing.

I'm hoping someone out there might explain (anonymously is fine) why this event couldn't have happened down Garey in downtown or on one of the other streets downtown. Since the city was already putting on the Chalk Art Festival and later in the evening the Art Walk was taking place, why couldn't we bring these high school students and their parents into downtown Pomona?

Was it merely a lack of communication that was the problem? Logistically, would it have been too much work? I'm not looking to blame anyone, but I do wonder if thinking too small is leaving the city with great individual efforts that aren't getting the publicity or showcase that they deserve. If you're going to offer any insight, I'd appreciate keeping it civil. These events demonstrate a vibrancy within the city that I feel deserves a thunderous round of applause.

If you missed the Chalk Art Festival, please consider taking it in next year...............maybe a few marching bands might show up to spice things up!

Here are some pics from the Chalk Art. Sorry about the quality (phone pics).
Even better pics can be found at Metro Pomona's coverage of the event.

6 comments:

pomona's art colonists said...

I love marching bands! I'm so sorry that I missed it!
It would have been great to march down second street
then to Main and third to Thomas plaza...dang!
Wouldn't be nice to have Christmas parade in the downtown area? I grew up in Savannah Ga. and I can remember how much we all looked forward to our parades....so great to see our friends and neighbors in
it and it brought a sense of pride to our city!

Anonymous said...

Battle of the bands that would be great right on 2nd.not just schools in Pomona but other schools around.

Andrew said...

I saw myself in one of the chalk art photos at metro pomona. It was like "Where's Waldo" although I was standing next to my yellow bike so it wasn't too hard.

Anonymous said...

Reading about the bands in the DB and then in your blog was the first I've heard of it. This sort of thing happens all too often.

The City and the general public are very much aware of what is scheduled for the Downtown. The permit process involves just about every City department, plus events are usually well publicized.

Had the City or the sponsor contacted us( with enough lead time) I'm certain that we could have arranged for the event to come to the downtown. "What we have here is a failure to communicate".

We have been trying for the longest time, for instance, to return the Christmas Parade to the Downtown with no avail. Recently we learned that the parade was cancelled this year due to lack of funds from the organizers, J.C.'s. If only they had come to us, we could have worked something out. We have plently of staging areas in the downtown and the parade could easily have ended at Hamilton Park as in the past.

Of course it's a major undertaking and an entire year is needed for planning, but with much of the planning and logistics in place, it could have been redirected from say City Hall at Garey, north to 2nd St, then West to Hamilton, etc. It's much too late in the year to plan for it now. Maybe next year?

So if anyone knows how to get a dialog established with these event organizers, please share that information with us. We would love to be more involved.


Larry...MetroPomona

Ed said...

Thanks Larry. That was just the type of info I was hoping to elicit with this post. From the piece in the DB, the marching band event may be annual, so I'll optimistically look to future. Based on pac's and Ren's comments, I think the community would be excited to support these types of school events......if we only knew about them. Of course, in defense of the band organizers, being the first year they probably had sleepless nights just running it down Fairplex Drive.

Along a similar vein, if anyone knows about a school theater or musical production, please let me know.

We live in Pomona, Think Big!!

Anonymous said...

Stephen Atchley is involved with school theatre. At one time he was looking for a place for students to perform in Pomona. Don't know if he reads the blogs, but maybe an email?

Larry