Urban Epicurean Festival 2015

Epic. It was "epic." Everyone was referring to the Urban Epicurean Festival as Urban Epic for short. Epic & urban in what way? (Having mainly to do with contemporary parlance, would be my guess.) There were a few food trucks, and some vendors selling food or food-related items, and I think I saw some Epicurean-related demos, but I didn't see much otherwise related directly to Urban Epicurean things. There was one vendor selling supplies to make pickled items, supplies for fermentation, canning and brewing. On the other hand, some people had another idea of the Urban aspect, devoid of content related to things Epicurean (but perhaps "Epic" in some sense of the word). 

All this points to the fact that the Urban Epicurean Festival had a kind of identity issue. As in, what exactly was it about? If you read their site, it is clear it was meant to be some sort of pastiche/collision coming together to produce something. Something "epic"?

Here's a shot of the festival in front of the hall at Fort Mason. A smattering of food trucks, all serving stuff that looked pretty good, with long lines. We got pozole from a vendor serving Mexican cuisine, which was quite good. Most of the vendors were the sort of folks you'd see at Maker Faire & similar arts and crafts fairs in the Bay Area.

One huge problem was the vendors at the far end of the room were close to where all the cider, mead, wine and beer makers/sellers were set up, and thus, a DJ was spinning records. None of this is a problem at all, except for the fact that the volume was so high that vendors could barely hear customers. Some I talked to sounded hoarse from having to practically shout to be heard. 

The party scene on the Beer & Wine mezzanine.

Which raises the question, why this set-up? I can understand the desire to make the back area a party scene, but how does this square with having vendors selling delicate, feminine jewelry and the like nearby? I saw some vendors selling things like skateboard/graffiti garb stuck in between vendors selling potpourri, sachet bags, bespoke perfumes and silk scarves. Seems like it would have made more sense to have the vendors marketing to young men closer to the loud music party scene, while those hawking more refined works would more naturally be suited in a quieter spot.

It really is a huge hall, with all kinds of vendors. Including many vendors who probably shouldn't have been there at all, because this was definitely not their audience. Some vendors told me they did pretty well (meaning they broke even, but not much more); other vendors were having trouble making their booth fee. And there were yet others I saw with the unmistakeable look on their face that they had sold hardly anything, perhaps gas money. Each time I saw someone with that look of despair, I stopped and looked at their work--every person was highly skilled in their craft--I don't think it was a lack of talent and skill that was an issue, but a combination of being at a Festival that lacked a coherent identity, and one that has been forced to charge very high booth fees. 

The story goes that the San Francisco Arts & Parks budget is very strapped for funding (very odd considering how much SF must make in taxes due to the high cost of real estate), and what I've been told is that, seeing the "success of food trucks & small craft vendors," SF City Council decided some time ago to, in part, make up for shortfalls in budgets by greatly increasing fees to use halls such as Fort Mason and the Hall of Flowers in Golden Gate Park.

I must say I laughed rather loudly at the bit about the "success of food trucks" in SF, because as someone recently living in Austin, Texas (and having traveled to places like Portland, Oregon more recently), the selection of food trucks in San Francisco is rather paltry. Yes, I know about trucks that show up in random spots downtown, the small clusters around Civic Center & Divisadero, that place set aside for food trucks near Rainbow Co-op. That's hardly anything--that's what, fifty food trucks total in San Francisco? There's far more in one spot in Portland. Last time I checked, there's hundreds throughout Austin. I scoff at the notion that the food truck scene in San Francisco is "successful." There's only one that's truly impressed me culinarily (Chairman Bao).

Humor aside, a huge part of the problem might be false perception. False perceptions does seem like a theme of the Bay Area, that everyone's making a fortune. Check your assumptions, folks--do you mean to include the exploited minimum wage earners? A full booth at the Urban Epicurean Festival costs $400. I think that only makes economic sense if the vendor can reasonably expect to make ten times that (in Gross receipts). Forty percent of receipts seems rapacious, and what about the people who didn't make their vendor fees, or those whose depressed countenances seemed to indicate they were completely shut out?