When I heard about the first ever Asian Night Market in Southern California, I was so excited. We talked about the type of food vendors that we might encounter - stinky tofu, fried squid balls, and all.
The drive from Irvine to Pasadena is not near but sixty miles one way. Consider the price of gas ($1 - 5 miles) now, we spent $24 for round trip gas. We didn't mind about that at all. We didn't even care that we paid $5 for parking and to walk 5 blocks to the event. Not until when we arrived at 1 North Oakland Avenue.
I'll let the pictures below continue the story:
The crowd was like a wave of ants. I didn't even know what vendors were there because couldn't see them. The street was narrow and short. We had to navigate through this crowd to get to the other end where the food area was. One thing came to my mind when I saw the crazy long lines for each food stalls - "Oh, Man! There goes the stinky tofu!" Well, first thing first, I couldn't even get into that area. That's the biggest disappointment I had.
There were probably some good food vendors, but we didn't get to try any. We walked away and left the place.
The event wasn't ready for such a big crowd. I've heard the turn out could be as many as 8000 people. The area probably can fit 500-800 comfortably. Street and parking were out of control. We saw several drivers running through red lights and stopping in the middle of an intersection because the traffic wasn't moving.
I personally think the organizers can do so much better than this. The event area was too small to handle this. Parking was not enough on top of the regular Saturday night crowd at downtown Pasadena. A note to the organizer - good idea to have an Asian Night Market but next time, have it in a bigger arena with more control on parking and traffic. Looking forward to the next one!
