MESSAGE FROM THE HCJ ORGANIZER

After 55+ hours of work at the Brickie Bowl over the last four days, I find myself sitting here at the field finally getting a chance to reflect on what in the world just happened. For those of you that don’t know, this is the first festival I have ever put on.. When I started planning this roughly a year ago, I had a vision I wanted to bring to this city, and last night I watched that vision come to life. We had our challenges, we made our mistakes, but we overcame all odds that were against us! The weather tried to break us, but we fought back! We safely moved all our attendees to shelter when Mother Nature got angry, and we went all day without any serious medical incidents. When it looked like Filmore’s set was going to be whipped out, he looked at me and said “Let’s give these people something to remember” and his team came up with the idea to perform an acoustic set for all our attendees in the gym. When the rain finally cleared, our production team busted their butts to get that stage ready for Devin Dawson to get the party started again. And like there was never even a delay, Montgomery Gentry closed out the night with a performance I don’t think anyone will ever forget.

I have to give a huge thank you to Brian Pikowski, Krystal Villarruel and my whole family for managing the festival with me yesterday and keeping things running smoothly even with all the continuous challenges we were dealt. Thank you to Nikki Lopez, Kelly Jane, Mayor Brian Snedecor and the whole City of Hobart team for making this festival possible and having the Brickie Bowl in amazing shape! I could not be more grateful to our Hobart Police and Fire Departments for everything they did to make sure every challenge we were dealt go as smooth as possible. Oh and let’s not forget about our amazing volunteers who worked their butts off yesterday! When I decided to take on this crazy venture, my goal was to give Hobart something to be proud of, and I hope we accomplished that last night. From the bottom of my heart, thank you to each and every one of you who came out and spent your day with us!