Onto San Francisco....don't tell anybody, but there's a 'boat' thing going on

Okay, the title is reflecting the absolute meltdown that is currently happening with the promotion and management of the America's Cup.  

I'm not talking about the politics, I'll get to that later.

Being from a marketing and event management background, I was absolutely twitching about some of the decisions being made.  I'm not saying I would have had all the answers, but something needs to be fixed over the next few weeks or else San Francisco and Mr. Larry Ellison are going to lose out on A LOT of money.

Oh, what the hell am I talking about?  

Taa  Daaaaa

According to the locals, there is absolutely NO coverage on the events surrounding the America's Cup (concerts, free live music from popular local acts, free movies, etc).  Uncle Larry wanted to go big, and he did, spending a lot of jack and building what will eventually be the new cruise ship terminal.  However, things apparently haven't gone well and the TV coverage has been pulled, although one NBC affiliate did air the New Zealand race. In which New Zealand won, because, well, they were the only ones racing. Funny how that works out.

However, he went TOO big and now he's got this massive sprawled out complex with two different entities (AC Park and AC Village) located about 4 miles apart.  What happens there is you start to lose concentrated momentum in a crowd, and quite honestly the Park 'looked' deserted even though quite a few people were there, but the Village was a ghost town.  The fine folks over at www.SailingAnarchy.com are having an absolute hey day with it.

One of the things that really had Tim and I going was the fact that out front of the Park they had barkers yelling over megaphones on how awesome it was inside.  Sigh.  Barkers? Really, Larry?  This isn't some carnival side show.

We knew it was off to a bad start when the big boats weren't going to be in the boat parade  and they cancelled the time trials (more on that later).  However, they didn't announce what they were going to do instead of time trials, we just were lucky to fall over it.

Also, they announced that you could have your picture taken with the actual Cup during certain times of the day.  That ALSO got cancelled but nobody knew.  Sigh.  

The poster signing sessions turned out to be popular, and I'm glad for both the sailors and fans on that one.