This event was a waste of my family's time and, as a previous reviewer noted, it's filled with teenagers!! A festival like this should be a celebration for all Filipinos and Filipino Americans. Instead, it was more like a community teen/pre-teen hangout...a place where they can spend time away from their parents! But, be that as it may, that wasn't the problem. In fact, it's actually great to see young FilAm kids doing something in regards to their heritage!
Here's what I didn't like:
a) the location: they couldn't find a flat, level street to hold this event? There wasn't an open park available, either? Not even Balboa Park? I really felt sorry for the residents of the area; I'm sure it was a major inconvenience to have their main roads to the freeways blocked-off/detoured, and to have numerous amount of people park in front of their houses on a Saturday. As someone mentioned below, a centralized location with appropriate parking would've been much better. I'm sure a good part of the fest's budget went to blocking off a major roadway and getting police to divert traffic; wasteful and unnecessary. My guess is that they're trying to mimic the street fests of Little Italy, North Park, OB, etc. It's a fail, IMHO.
b) NO FILIPINO FOOD. Ok, would you have an Octoberfest with no beer or bratwurst or sausages? Then how can you have a filipino event with absolutely no filipino food?? And not one restaurant or food truck in all of SD was available?? C'mon.
c) lack of emphasis on filipino culture: seemed more about selling ugly tshirts and promoting Bob Filner for Mayor than representing filipino art and culture in SD.
d) a girl screaming pre-teen music (out of tune, I might add) is a major turn off. You couldn't get Jessica Sanchez or someone with real talent? Instead, you got karoake singers for your musical entertainment. Well done.
Even though it was free, I cannot recommend this event at all. The only positive I can remark is that the staff at the gates were very nice and friendly. But the rest of the fest? Meh. There are better organized festivals than this. This is merely a community teen event rather than a celebration of fil-am culture in San Diego. read more