Vegetarian Festival of Sarasota Recap

Hey folks, this was a big event for us this year, so the blog entry is correspondingly large (and belated) - enjoy!

On Sunday November 5th, VegSarasota participated in it's second annual Vegetarian Cookout & Compassionate Living Festival, Sponsored by Sarasota in Defense of Animals, from noon to 3:30 pm. The location was the beautiful grounds of the Edison Keith Mansion at Phillippi Estate Park. Over 300 people came out to enjoy the food, music, and educational opportunity.

The VegSarasota booth was once again gorgeous and sprawling, even after having to pull a McGyver to get our banner to stay up (the rules state nothing may be affixed to the walls). I've decided that binder clips are the new duck tape! We had starter kits, pamphlets on poultry factory farming and "Why Vegan", magazines & books on display, and plenty of smiling faces to talk to. Here's a picture of the booth, Raylon & Dill cheery & smiling as always.



The best thing about these types of events is the people. It was really a pleasure to share that mind-expanding interaction with so many people while meeting them for the first time. It is always satisfying to help people gain knowledge that they seek out. Coming to this type of event shows a spark of interest, and that's all that's needed to plant the seed when the truth is so glaring. We sold several veggie buttons that we made and a couple Vegan Planet (or as I call it the Vegan Bible) cookbooks to help us cover our costs. We also got to talk to many people about the Thanksgiving Potluck and invited everyone we could to join us for this spectacular event.




Of course, it wouldn't be a great event without some great music & food as well. I didn't get the name of the band because I was working the booth all day, but they were phenomenal! I had just enough time to snap this photo, so here they are, followed by a shot of some folks enjoying themselves on the terrace under a perfect Florida sky.






And here's some of our friends enjoying the veggie dogs & Dill's special potato salad, which we had at the VegSarasota booth (along with Newman O's vegan cookies). This apparently made the potato salad a commodity to be envied, and if you knew where to find this magical food, it made you a quasi-celebrity.


(Michele, Aurelia, Barry, Jud)
Of course our good friends at Biotica Ecotours were there renting Kayaks by the hour. They were so popular due to the good weather, they actually ran out of Kayaks about half way through the day. Congrats guys! Here is Kris & Chris happy with the turnout.



I would like to extend special thanks to Michele for being a wonderful meeter & greeter, Judson for helping to talk to interested persons, his mother Bonita & Dill's mom Brenda for helping us distribute flyers for the Thanksgiving event.