The Levitt Pavilion and adjacent Imperial Avenue parking lot rocked all day.
The 11th annual Blues Views & BBQ Festival offered 2 stages of fantastic music, plus great food (barbecue and food trucks galore), kids’ bounce houses, and much, much more.
It’s one of Westport’s greatest events of the year. And it continues Sunday, from 11:30 a.m. to 8 p.m. Click here for more information, and tickets.
Sister Sparrow & the Dirty Birds rocked the Levitt Pavilion main stage.
A small portion of the large Levitt crowd.
The “BBQ” part of the festival.
Blues Views … and Tattoos.
The Imperial Avenue lot had its own roster of excellent bands.
Blues Views & BBQ: a weekend for all ages. (Photos/Dan Woog)
So the taxpayers kicked in one million dollars to help build the new Levitt on our own property. Plus we backstopped the roughly 6 million in additional funds which were borrowed. Then we leased the entire facility to a non-profit called the Friends of the Levitt for 25 years. For free. And then we just walked away. Now the Friends have turned around and, I guess, rented this town-owned facility to the Pig Festival. The Pig Festival turns out to be a for-profit venture owed by RTM member Matt Mandell who uses the Chamber of Commerce’s 41 Riverside Avenue address as the address for something called BVBBQ, LLC. I’m not yet sure what I think of all this, but given the abusive attitude of the Pig Festival promoter towards the residential neighbors who get blasted with noise for ten hours a day over two days (after weathering over 50 shows during the normal Levitt season) I sense there may possibly be some legitimate governance concerns here.