Nearly turned down a year ago because of problems with size, noise and accountability, the eighth annual Brazilian Day Festival in Pacific Beach scheduled for Sunday, Sept. 13 was nixed this year by the PB Special Events Committee.
\nThat decision has been appealed to the city, which will have the final say on whether or not the carnival-style parade with vibrant floats, extravagant costumes and energetic music, will be a go in PB or not this year.
\nThe popular four-hour Sunday festival features non-stop entertainment on two stages, including musical bands, dance ensembles, a food court, a vendor\u2019s exhibition and a kids\u2019 zone.
\n“The Pacific Beach Special Events Committee is solely an advisory group,” noted committee chair Debbie Conca.\u00a0 “Groups wanting to have an event in Pacific Beach are asked by the city\u00a0to come to this group and present the logistics and details. This group denied the Brazilian Day Festival 5-2. The city can still approve or deny a permit with or without the endorsement of the Pacific Beach Special Events Committee.”\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0
\nBrazilian Day spokesman Paulo Batuta was taken aback by the special events committee\u2019s denial of the event, insisting his group has played by the rules and taken the community\u2019s concerns about noise and other issues to heart.
\n“We have documentation that shows we\u2019ve addressed all issues and fixed pretty much everything,” Batuta said, noting parade organizers, in a partnership with PB Middle School, have also secured use of the school\u2019s huge parking lot to handle event parking needs.
\nBatuta said concerns about noise from live bands on stage was addressed by “pointing speakers down and turning them toward the street” to muffle noise.
\nPreviously, residents near the event had complained there was no one available to contact to register concerns that could be addressed on event day.
\n“This time we have two phone numbers available to them,” Batuta said, adding private security, as well as police, will be on hand for crowd control.
\n“We didn\u2019t get any phone calls last year,” Batuta said. “Nobody complained about the noise.”
\nBatuta said a survey was sent out recently that showed 25 percent of those attending Brazilian Day live in PB.
\n“PB is our community, our little Brazil, we are home,” Batuta said. “That\u2019s why it\u2019s held in PB.”
\nPointing out Brazilian Day is alcohol-free and family friendly, Batuta argued that the event serves the community by “bringing business to PB, not just on this one day but all year.”
\n“We\u2019re part of this community,” said Batuta. “So there\u2019s no reason to kick us out.”
\nPB Special Events Committee member Michael Wagner noted several reasons why Brazil Day was not supported this year:
\n\u2022\u00a0It\u2019s grown in size from 5,000 to 50,000-plus and their website notes 60,000 are expected this year, even though at the committee meeting it was stated that “30,000” were expected.
\n\u2022 The noise\/bands have been a sore point for many years. Although they allege they have a “complaint phone number,” it has either no one to answer or no one to actually follow up on the complaints.
\n\u2022 Streets for several blocks on each side of Garnet Avenue are packed and everything from churches to businesses have complained about parking.
\n\u2022\u00a0Several businesses have alleged trash is left everywhere in front of their stores, people have blocked the businesses, and the event has more than 100 vendors, none of which are from PB. Several bars have complained that the day of the event is the first day of football, and they expect people coming into their places, but the event takes up the sidewalk and parking.
\n\u2022\u00a0The committee expects some profit returned to the community. This event supports some group that has its office outside of PB and gives the proceeds to Brazilian groups outside of PB. No PB school\/community group is in the parade or has a spot in the event. PB is not benefiting in anyway.
\nEve Anderson of the Pacific Beach Planning Group, noted the community has been having problems with events, like Brazilian Day, outgrowing the capacity of the community to deal with noise, parking and other problems associated with them. She said it dates back to the old PB “block party,” which simply got to be too big and unwieldy to cope with any longer.
\n“A lot of us live here, a lot of us support businesses all over PB \u2013 but we all don\u2019t take over the street,” Anderson said, noting the event itself, “if it were half the size and put on by a group affiliated with PB, then it might be OK.” But she noted the Brazilian group has been reluctant to move it off Garnet Avenue (the heart of town) or to a non-warm weather time of year (to reduce crowds).
\n“It\u2019s just time for it (Brazilian Day) to move,” Anderson concluded.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Nearly turned down a year ago because of problems with size, noise and accountability, the eighth annual Brazilian Day Festival in Pacific Beach scheduled for Sunday, Sept. 13 was nixed this year by the PB Special Events Committee. That decision has been appealed to the city, which will have the final say on whether or […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":726,"featured_media":283198,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11559","_seopress_titles_title":"Pacific Beach may say adeus to Brazilian Day","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11559,12360,11551],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-283200","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-beach-bay-press","category-duplicate","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283200","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/726"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=283200"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283200\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/283198"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=283200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=283200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=283200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}