On Sunday, our family went to downtown Los Angeles for Fiesta Broadway, a huge festival of music and corporate promotion festival running about ten blocks down Broadway Avenue.It is typically held the Sunday before Cinco de Mayo, a Mexican holiday which has carried over to the United States among the Mexican immigrant population, as well as another excuse for college students to get drunk.
This was our first time to the festival, as I had earlier had the impression that it was meant for Latino families. But with a few hours to spend together on Sunday, and reports of huge crowds and logistical difficulties at the Festival of Books at UCLA, we decided to head to downtown.
I read in the newspaper today that the crowds were much lighter than usual this year. If that is true, I don't want to imagine a typical event, because the crowds were hard enough to navigate with two strollers holding a baby and a toddler.Mainly, we went about two-thirds of the route, picking up freebies (did I mention my wife and I are cheap?), signing up for giveaways, and checking out the sights.
Some of the bigger corporate presences we saw were for T Mobile, McDonald's, Bank of America, AT&T, Coca Cola, and Pepsi. Corporate America definitely recognizes the buying power of Latinos in this country.
My earlier impression was correct, in that probably ninety-five percent of the crowd appeared to be Latino. There were two large music stages, set up at either end of Broadway, but we didn't have much interest in the music.
This was the same street where a massive pro-immigration reform demonstration was held at noon today in downtown Los Angeles. According to news reports, police estimated a crowd of 250,000 at the rally today, the first of two in Los Angeles on what they called A Day Without Immigrants. Though most of the stores were open for business during the festival, news reports said practically every store was closed today.
