I will never ever go to this nightmarish festival- after this year again!! There were people there with 1 week old newborns in the boiling sun. The babies were screaming and beat red with sunburn. One woman walked around with a 3 day old puppy in her arms. Three times I went to try the fried calamari and 3 times they told me to come back in 20 minutes. The lines were too long for the baked sweet potatoes and I gave up on that. It was boiling and everyone brought their dogs (big or small) and the crowd was so severely packed that people were just trampling on them. Why they always have this thing on concrete streets where there are no trees , instead of a park with shade I'll never know. It was like a really bad nightmare.

The location on Delaware is such an improvement from Main Street. Although I felt the crowds were tough to deal with Sunday, I only needed to remind myself of how frustrating it was on Main. Perhaps stetching it even further up the street or utilizing the space better with food tents on the circle rather than the Dell Extreme tent, lottery tent, etc. As stephenjames716 said, thought maybe widening it by using the sidewalks would provide some relief from the congestion. But first and foremost, I have said this for years, including last year on this web site, add a day or two! Start on Friday afternoon, or even Thursday afternoon and all Friday, providing more opportunity, and possibly lessening the rush of people squeezing into a 2 day event. traffic can be re-routed for a day or two. If this event wants to grow every year as they say they do, why not make the jump to a third or fourth day?

Pets and children in strollers should not be allowed. It's much too congested and being run into on numerous occassions by careless and thoughtless parents as well as trying to avoid stepping on dogs detracted from the event.

The compliants here about the dog/children vs everyone else are kind of interesting. I truly believe that they are the product of Buffaloians not really understanding 24x7 downtown living. I recently spent a week in a downtown neighborhood in Chicago and children and dogs (Chicago recently voted the most dog friendly city in America) are everywhere you look. Difference in Chicago being that people live, work, & play in downtown Chicago and have adjusted their lifestyles to that sort of living. You do not see many of the double wide, bring everything in your house, suburbanite type strollers in that city. People have conformed to life on the go and have right sized themselves to be able to survive and in turn non-children city dwellers seem to have a much more respectful opinion of those that do have children. Same goes for dogs. Now, you compare that to the taste of Buffalo and events in downtown where a large majority of the people are coming from out in the burbs to attend this city event and they bring these massive strollers and their "we have children get out of our way" attitudes with them and hence the comments we see in this post.

bboozehound

My complaint is NOT that there were children and dogs in the city. I have lived in the city 37 years and have loved that there are families living here. What I hate - it's nightmarish- is having it be BOILING 90+ degrees and so packed with thousands of people that even I could only walk an inch at a time - and have people bring a one week old baby or 3 day old puppy ( I asked the woman how old it was). These people are abusive towards their loved ones and to me -by having me have to watch the screaming/sunburning abuse.

GDC

I treid to give you 5 stars but the star system doesn't work that way I guess. Anyway - I agree with you completely!