Boulevard to Host Beer, Food, and Art Festival

(via http://www.boulevardia.com)

It's been a pretty exciting couple of weeks in the KC beer scene with the events and announcements from Santa Fe, 4-Hands, Goose Island, and of course Rock and Run's official opening on Wednesday this week. Now we have even more exciting news for our fair beer city. Boulevard had just announced a new beer, food, and art festival that they're calling Boulevardia. The event that they will be hosting alongside O’Neill Marketing & Event Management is scheduled for June 13-15 in and around the 12th Street viaduct in the West Bottoms. From the press release:

"The three-day event will be highlighted with a craft beer and food sampling experience, but will also include family activities, entertainment, shopping, and eco-education in a unique urban setting.

Current plans are to incorporate a variety of international and locally-made beer, food, music, art, cycling, sustainability, and distinctive handmade goods from local vendors, creating a one-of-a-kind celebration for the city."

While they're still light on details, I'm excited to see how this event will pan out. We've already got some great beer fests in the city throughout the year including the zombie KC Beerfest that keeps coming back to life, Hop Fest, and the Strong Ale Festival. But with the mention of family and educational activities in addition to everything else, it really sounds like they're trying to put together something different and reach out to a broader audience. I imagine it's going to be something like a State Fair that doesn't require 3 hours of driving, has a much better beer and food selection, and fewer sketchy carnival rides. We can only hope for deep fried beer.

It will be interesting to see which breweries make the cut, since Boulevard will obviously be reaching out to their competition to fill out the festival. It may turn out to be a fine line that Boulevard has to walk if they don't want to make anyone angry. I did find it pretty humorous that they're planning on having "international and locally-made beer" even though they're trying to make this event a "'world within a city' concept." I think we can guess who at least one of the international breweries might be.