April 19, 2024 • 15 mins
CoolKay interviews Andrea Amadour about this years Cinco de Mayo Festival ... taking place in downtown Denver on May 4 and 5th.... we discuss how the festival got started, who runs it and of course parking... and what there is to do at the festival this year. There are lots of things for kids. They have a taco eating contest. Check out their website!
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
This is Andrea Kyi Feedran's and coolk here. Are you working with the
Cinco Demayo festival coming up? Yes? I am, okay, so that's
coming up for Cinco Demayo, andI understand it's the biggest festival in the
state of Colorado. It's the largestcultural event in the state of Colorado.
(00:21):
Okay, you must have thousands ofpeople that come to it. Thousands.
It's at Civic Center Park, weget. You know, it really depends
upon the year, the weather,all that good stuff, but definitely lining
up to be a good year.And you know, we're hoping to see
a couple hundred thousand people this year. Andrea, I have to ask the
(00:44):
most obvious question. The first thingthat comes to my mind is where do
these people park? You know,we do encourage people to take as much
ride sharing and public transportation as possible. Pacific Center, you know, it's
there are lots located around the event. There's street level parking. There is
(01:07):
the Cultural Complex parking garage that is, you know, literally right across the
street off of thirteenth between twelve andthirteenth and Broadway. A lot of people
like to like to park park thereand they offer special event pricing at that
lot. But yeah, there's there'squite a bit of options. But we
yeah, we definitely encourage people touse public transportation as much as possible.
(01:29):
Now very close to light rail linesand you know RTD stops. So there's
a lot of things going out atthis festival. You have a lot of
food, you have entertainment on stages. Yes, we have three stages of
live entertainment. We have lineups allday long. The event is open from
ten am to eight pm both days. In terms of the lineup, all
(01:55):
of those are on our website atSinco Demayo Denver dot com and so you
can see they're on all three stages, who is performing and at what time.
But all of these stages feature culturalperformances from Mexican regional bands Madiachi,
pro Codico just in even local localbands as well of all genres. So
(02:20):
you have you know, old schoolR and B, funk rock, you
know, a little bit of everythingon the local stage. Okay, all
right, So and you must havea lot of food, so you've got
a lot of vendors. Isn't thereany activity going out in the park too,
(02:42):
Yeah, So the event takes placeat Civic Center Park right at the
park itself, and then the fourstreets that surround the park, which are
Bannocks, Fourteenth Avenue, Broadway,and Colfax. All those streets are shut
down for the event. So thatwhole area is the festival. Yeah.
So yeah, you've ever been tolike Taste of Colorado when it was at
(03:08):
the park or Pride Fest or people'ssame thing kind of set up in terms
of you know, where it happensand what shuts down for that mm hmm.
So who puts the festival on?So our organization produces the event.
The name of our group is calledNew Said Community Development Corporation. This will
(03:30):
be our thirty fifth year putting onthis event. It started on Santa Fe
Drive and was moved to the parkin ninety five. And you know we're
one of the largest UH festivals outthe gate right uh and when the when
the spring season hits. But ourorganization, we're a nonprofit and we operate
(03:53):
in three service areas. So we'reprovide We provide HUD housing counseling for low
and modern income communities. We offerfirst time home buyer assistants, foreclosure assistance,
We have down payment assistants. Weoffer group education for folks trying to
get their FAHA certifications. We alsooperate in small business development and programming,
(04:16):
so we have a retail incubator programcalled the Zone Marketplace. We have a
lot of technical assistance type programming andeducational classes and that kind of thing.
And then we also are a lender, so we have small business loans.
We have a very unique program calledLending Circles. So yeah, that's that's
(04:41):
what we do as an organization.Sorry. We also offer financial literacy counseling
as well. Is this the onlyfestival that you put on of this size?
Yes, this is the main festivalthat we put on too. We
are very active with s to sayDrive still because you know, our offices
are still here on Santa Fe Driveand so we do participate in four First
(05:05):
Friday events. Santa Fe Drive hasthe first state designated our district and so
every First Friday, you know,people come out and take place in the
art walk. We get we gettens of thousands of people down here on
First Friday. So we actually owna parking lot down on the seven hundred
(05:25):
block and we activate that parking lotduring First Fridays. And we do a
mini festival in our parking lot andwe bring out food trucks and entertainment that
kind of thing. Okay, allright, all right, So I would
imagine that you have a lot ofMexican food. So what's your favorite Mexican
food? I'm curious. Oh Idon't I like it all. I tell
(05:48):
you what, though, the tacosat our event, I mean, you
can't beat it. You can't beatit. I mean the street tacos,
the kind of stuf us that youknow, you find is very authentic at
our event, and so you reallycan't go wrong. The chacos are my
(06:08):
favorite thing to have at the event. But we have we feature we feature
a lot of different types of thingsas well, so you can get your
typical, you know, festival foodsas well, like turkey legs and tunnel
cakes and ice creams. And Ithink we're featuring uh uh, you know,
kettle corns. And you know,do we still have that one vendor
(06:32):
that's doing the pineapple thing? Doyou know? We we have this one
vendor and they come every year.They bring whole pineapples and they make movie
drinks out of them. They're reallywonderful. People like to get those and
and go get go go, putshots of tequila and them. So but
but yeah, the food is wonderful. Our drink is good. We have
(06:54):
we offer three bars, We offera lot of beer stations, a lot
of pets, the stations for justyou know, pepsi's and waters and things
like that. But yeah, it'sWe also have lots of ATMs on site,
so we're both a cash and creditcard based festival. It's free to
enter the event. There's no admissionfee. So anytime you have an event
(07:17):
at Civic Center Park, admission isfree. Okay. We also are actual
to be featuring like a parade.Go ahead, the parade takes place.
It opens up the event basically elevenam on Saturday morning, right and it
kind of does this half circle throughdowntown and it ends up on Lincoln.
(07:39):
But really great parade. We haveall kinds of entries, lots of dancers,
some musicians, we have a lotof lowriders things like that. It's
a really fun parade. And thenwe also offer we also have ti Walla
races and that's a really popular event. People pre register their dogs on our
(08:03):
website and they're able to raise theirdogs and that takes place at that takes
place on Saturday at two o'clock rightacross from the sial pond. And then
we have a taco eating contest thathappens on Sunday in that same location,
right across from the sillpond, andwe do three rounds. How fast can
(08:24):
you eat? Uh? Ten tacos? Right? And that's a fun one
as well. That's that's a crowdcrowd face. Yeah, I'm not sure
that I could eat ten tacos here. No, I can't do it either,
but maybe Okay, I'm really hungry. Okay, So what about for
(08:45):
kids, because as a parent,I would ask that, Yeah, for
sure, we do have an entirearea for kids activities. We we we
contract with a group who brings out, you know a lot of bounty type
things, right, a lot ofthings for kids to engage in. Are
we doing the euro bunch of Wehave the euro Jump this year. That's
(09:07):
that thing where you know, youhold on to it and they bounce you
high and it like straps you inon both sides. It's really fun that
kids love that thing. So soyeah, we definitely It's like I say,
it's a family event. So Wedefinitely want people to bring their families
out Kaye King Supers. They theytake up an entire section of the event
and they're getting out kinds of samplesand giveaways. People love that, so
(09:33):
definitely want to promote that. Butwe have lots of sponsor features, lots
of fun things for people to engagewith, you know, that are that
are family friendly. We also havean entire low rider car show that goes
all the way down Colfax and theybring you know, they bring out their
(09:54):
beautiful cars and they even have arider by Bicycles so they make their own
contest out of it. And that'sthat's another another big crowd pleaser and for
everyone for sure. Do you havearts and craft vendors too? We do.
We have some art vendors, forsure. We have folks that are
selling their own their own art pieces. People that are selling a lot of
(10:16):
different kinds of retail type items.Gosh, a lot of artisans or what
do you call those folks, apothecarykind of things. We have a vendor
who sells soaps, and we havea lot of like face painters and you
know, things for people to engagewith. But yeah, there's there's quite
(10:37):
a bit of variety of vendors forsure. All right, do you have
any idea what your attendance has then? Is it growing every year? Our
attendance has stayed pretty steady. Iwould say that COVID, we couldn't do
the year the event for two yearsduring COVID during twenty twenty and twenty twenty
one. We brought it back intwenty twenty two. That wasn't the best
(10:58):
crowd year. Twenty twenty three wasway better, Like we saw double what
we saw in twenty twenty two,and we're hoping to see double that this
year because it's the actual holiday ofSinco to Mile falls on the weekend,
so we're we're looking forward to seeing, you know, as many people as
possible. We we think that youknow, with a with the major influx
(11:22):
of new people to Denver, they'venot been exposed to Sincle to Mile may
not know that we have this bigevent. I think people are shocked when
they realize, oh, this isthe largest cultural event in the state,
you know. So you know,it was funny we do our banking right
on the corner of Colfax and Colfaxand a fear at the chase and I
(11:48):
was talking to the banker and sheand I was telling her about it,
and she was just blown away.She had no idea. And I said,
well, how long have you beenhere? Oh, I've only been
here a year. I said,Oh, that's why. That's why you
don't know. So it's we're alwaystrying to do our best to let new
crowds know about the event. Youknow. It's it's that's that's the tricky
part, right because they just maynot know that. You know, Denver
(12:11):
and Colorado has a huge thing goto Mile Festival. Well, i'll see
if I see if I can helpyou with that. We'll spread it all
around the country. And I appreciateit. I appreciate it. Yeah,
thank you. Okay, okay,all right, there's one more thing if
I could mention, if I could, Okay, Oh, go ahead.
We also feature a vi t pieceto the event that you that is that
(12:33):
is ticketed. But what's cool aboutthat is it only takes place on Saturday
and it's only for like a threehour period. But in there we offer
a tastings, like we're bringing outdistillery groups. So you know you've been
to like beer tasting festivals and thingslike that. We're offering that on a
(12:54):
smaller scale in this event. Butwe're we're featuring our distillery company that we
Colorado has a lot of distilleries,right, Yes, so there's people that
are featuring like their own their ownRUMs, their own vodkas, their own
moonshines, their own tequila, andso you'll get to you'll get to taste
all those from from these different fromthese different groups, and so it's very
(13:16):
unique. We have we feature reallyawesome dj there too. We have we
have froll codic dance performers in there. Really want to just encourage people.
You can buy those tickets on ourwebsite at think go to my old Denver
dot com. But it's it's alot of fun. I think you'd really
enjoy it if if you came andyou check all the i DS. Right,
(13:37):
yes, ma'am, And we suredo we that's our job for sure.
I've had teenagers. That's it wasthe first thought that grassed my mind.
Oh yeah, we have to dothat for sure. Okay, all
right, Well it sounds like alot of fun. And you know,
I'm concerned that I would have aboutthis thing, is the stinking parking and
(13:58):
that that would worry me come intothis festival. Yeah, I mean,
you know, it's it's it neverhas stopped people from coming to the festival,
I will say that. And youknow there's there there, there is
quite a bit of parking around theevent. You know, I always advocate,
I always advocate for car pulling andyou know, using your ubers or
(14:20):
lifts because those are really the bestway to get here, or if need
be parking, you know in uhuh somewhere where you can take in light
rail. That's always an option too. And the old woman in me wants
to know if you have a lotof restrooms. Oh, yes, we
sure do. Yeah, we absolutelydo. We have. We even have
(14:41):
handicapped restrooms everything people need. Yeah, absolutely yeah. Okay, okay,
all right, Well I've thoroughly enjoyedthis and we'll get it up and I'll
pass it all around the country andwe'll see what happens. Thank you so
much. I really appreciate the promotion. Thank you so much. I've been
I'm talking to you. Thank youme as well. Thank you. Have
(15:03):
a good one. Bye bye,bye bye.
This is Andrea Kyi Feedran's and coolk here. Are you working with the
Cinco Demayo festival coming up? Yes? I am, okay, so that's
coming up for Cinco Demayo, andI understand it's the biggest festival in the
state of Colorado. It's the largestcultural event in the state of Colorado.
(00:21):
Okay, you must have thousands ofpeople that come to it. Thousands.
It's at Civic Center Park, weget. You know, it really depends
upon the year, the weather,all that good stuff, but definitely lining
up to be a good year.And you know, we're hoping to see
a couple hundred thousand people this year. Andrea, I have to ask the
(00:44):
most obvious question. The first thingthat comes to my mind is where do
these people park? You know,we do encourage people to take as much
ride sharing and public transportation as possible. Pacific Center, you know, it's
there are lots located around the event. There's street level parking. There is
(01:07):
the Cultural Complex parking garage that is, you know, literally right across the
street off of thirteenth between twelve andthirteenth and Broadway. A lot of people
like to like to park park thereand they offer special event pricing at that
lot. But yeah, there's there'squite a bit of options. But we
yeah, we definitely encourage people touse public transportation as much as possible.
(01:29):
Now very close to light rail linesand you know RTD stops. So there's
a lot of things going out atthis festival. You have a lot of
food, you have entertainment on stages. Yes, we have three stages of
live entertainment. We have lineups allday long. The event is open from
ten am to eight pm both days. In terms of the lineup, all
(01:55):
of those are on our website atSinco Demayo Denver dot com and so you
can see they're on all three stages, who is performing and at what time.
But all of these stages feature culturalperformances from Mexican regional bands Madiachi,
pro Codico just in even local localbands as well of all genres. So
(02:20):
you have you know, old schoolR and B, funk rock, you
know, a little bit of everythingon the local stage. Okay, all
right, So and you must havea lot of food, so you've got
a lot of vendors. Isn't thereany activity going out in the park too,
(02:42):
Yeah, So the event takes placeat Civic Center Park right at the
park itself, and then the fourstreets that surround the park, which are
Bannocks, Fourteenth Avenue, Broadway,and Colfax. All those streets are shut
down for the event. So thatwhole area is the festival. Yeah.
So yeah, you've ever been tolike Taste of Colorado when it was at
(03:08):
the park or Pride Fest or people'ssame thing kind of set up in terms
of you know, where it happensand what shuts down for that mm hmm.
So who puts the festival on?So our organization produces the event.
The name of our group is calledNew Said Community Development Corporation. This will
(03:30):
be our thirty fifth year putting onthis event. It started on Santa Fe
Drive and was moved to the parkin ninety five. And you know we're
one of the largest UH festivals outthe gate right uh and when the when
the spring season hits. But ourorganization, we're a nonprofit and we operate
(03:53):
in three service areas. So we'reprovide We provide HUD housing counseling for low
and modern income communities. We offerfirst time home buyer assistants, foreclosure assistance,
We have down payment assistants. Weoffer group education for folks trying to
get their FAHA certifications. We alsooperate in small business development and programming,
(04:16):
so we have a retail incubator programcalled the Zone Marketplace. We have a
lot of technical assistance type programming andeducational classes and that kind of thing.
And then we also are a lender, so we have small business loans.
We have a very unique program calledLending Circles. So yeah, that's that's
(04:41):
what we do as an organization.Sorry. We also offer financial literacy counseling
as well. Is this the onlyfestival that you put on of this size?
Yes, this is the main festivalthat we put on too. We
are very active with s to sayDrive still because you know, our offices
are still here on Santa Fe Driveand so we do participate in four First
(05:05):
Friday events. Santa Fe Drive hasthe first state designated our district and so
every First Friday, you know,people come out and take place in the
art walk. We get we gettens of thousands of people down here on
First Friday. So we actually owna parking lot down on the seven hundred
(05:25):
block and we activate that parking lotduring First Fridays. And we do a
mini festival in our parking lot andwe bring out food trucks and entertainment that
kind of thing. Okay, allright, all right, So I would
imagine that you have a lot ofMexican food. So what's your favorite Mexican
food? I'm curious. Oh Idon't I like it all. I tell
(05:48):
you what, though, the tacosat our event, I mean, you
can't beat it. You can't beatit. I mean the street tacos,
the kind of stuf us that youknow, you find is very authentic at
our event, and so you reallycan't go wrong. The chacos are my
(06:08):
favorite thing to have at the event. But we have we feature we feature
a lot of different types of thingsas well, so you can get your
typical, you know, festival foodsas well, like turkey legs and tunnel
cakes and ice creams. And Ithink we're featuring uh uh, you know,
kettle corns. And you know,do we still have that one vendor
(06:32):
that's doing the pineapple thing? Doyou know? We we have this one
vendor and they come every year.They bring whole pineapples and they make movie
drinks out of them. They're reallywonderful. People like to get those and
and go get go go, putshots of tequila and them. So but
but yeah, the food is wonderful. Our drink is good. We have
(06:54):
we offer three bars, We offera lot of beer stations, a lot
of pets, the stations for justyou know, pepsi's and waters and things
like that. But yeah, it'sWe also have lots of ATMs on site,
so we're both a cash and creditcard based festival. It's free to
enter the event. There's no admissionfee. So anytime you have an event
(07:17):
at Civic Center Park, admission isfree. Okay. We also are actual
to be featuring like a parade.Go ahead, the parade takes place.
It opens up the event basically elevenam on Saturday morning, right and it
kind of does this half circle throughdowntown and it ends up on Lincoln.
(07:39):
But really great parade. We haveall kinds of entries, lots of dancers,
some musicians, we have a lotof lowriders things like that. It's
a really fun parade. And thenwe also offer we also have ti Walla
races and that's a really popular event. People pre register their dogs on our
(08:03):
website and they're able to raise theirdogs and that takes place at that takes
place on Saturday at two o'clock rightacross from the sial pond. And then
we have a taco eating contest thathappens on Sunday in that same location,
right across from the sillpond, andwe do three rounds. How fast can
(08:24):
you eat? Uh? Ten tacos? Right? And that's a fun one
as well. That's that's a crowdcrowd face. Yeah, I'm not sure
that I could eat ten tacos here. No, I can't do it either,
but maybe Okay, I'm really hungry. Okay, So what about for
(08:45):
kids, because as a parent,I would ask that, Yeah, for
sure, we do have an entirearea for kids activities. We we we
contract with a group who brings out, you know a lot of bounty type
things, right, a lot ofthings for kids to engage in. Are
we doing the euro bunch of Wehave the euro Jump this year. That's
(09:07):
that thing where you know, youhold on to it and they bounce you
high and it like straps you inon both sides. It's really fun that
kids love that thing. So soyeah, we definitely It's like I say,
it's a family event. So Wedefinitely want people to bring their families
out Kaye King Supers. They theytake up an entire section of the event
and they're getting out kinds of samplesand giveaways. People love that, so
(09:33):
definitely want to promote that. Butwe have lots of sponsor features, lots
of fun things for people to engagewith, you know, that are that
are family friendly. We also havean entire low rider car show that goes
all the way down Colfax and theybring you know, they bring out their
(09:54):
beautiful cars and they even have arider by Bicycles so they make their own
contest out of it. And that'sthat's another another big crowd pleaser and for
everyone for sure. Do you havearts and craft vendors too? We do.
We have some art vendors, forsure. We have folks that are
selling their own their own art pieces. People that are selling a lot of
(10:16):
different kinds of retail type items.Gosh, a lot of artisans or what
do you call those folks, apothecarykind of things. We have a vendor
who sells soaps, and we havea lot of like face painters and you
know, things for people to engagewith. But yeah, there's there's quite
(10:37):
a bit of variety of vendors forsure. All right, do you have
any idea what your attendance has then? Is it growing every year? Our
attendance has stayed pretty steady. Iwould say that COVID, we couldn't do
the year the event for two yearsduring COVID during twenty twenty and twenty twenty
one. We brought it back intwenty twenty two. That wasn't the best
(10:58):
crowd year. Twenty twenty three wasway better, Like we saw double what
we saw in twenty twenty two,and we're hoping to see double that this
year because it's the actual holiday ofSinco to Mile falls on the weekend,
so we're we're looking forward to seeing, you know, as many people as
possible. We we think that youknow, with a with the major influx
(11:22):
of new people to Denver, they'venot been exposed to Sincle to Mile may
not know that we have this bigevent. I think people are shocked when
they realize, oh, this isthe largest cultural event in the state,
you know. So you know,it was funny we do our banking right
on the corner of Colfax and Colfaxand a fear at the chase and I
(11:48):
was talking to the banker and sheand I was telling her about it,
and she was just blown away.She had no idea. And I said,
well, how long have you beenhere? Oh, I've only been
here a year. I said,Oh, that's why. That's why you
don't know. So it's we're alwaystrying to do our best to let new
crowds know about the event. Youknow. It's it's that's that's the tricky
part, right because they just maynot know that. You know, Denver
(12:11):
and Colorado has a huge thing goto Mile Festival. Well, i'll see
if I see if I can helpyou with that. We'll spread it all
around the country. And I appreciateit. I appreciate it. Yeah,
thank you. Okay, okay,all right, there's one more thing if
I could mention, if I could, Okay, Oh, go ahead.
We also feature a vi t pieceto the event that you that is that
(12:33):
is ticketed. But what's cool aboutthat is it only takes place on Saturday
and it's only for like a threehour period. But in there we offer
a tastings, like we're bringing outdistillery groups. So you know you've been
to like beer tasting festivals and thingslike that. We're offering that on a
(12:54):
smaller scale in this event. Butwe're we're featuring our distillery company that we
Colorado has a lot of distilleries,right, Yes, so there's people that
are featuring like their own their ownRUMs, their own vodkas, their own
moonshines, their own tequila, andso you'll get to you'll get to taste
all those from from these different fromthese different groups, and so it's very
(13:16):
unique. We have we feature reallyawesome dj there too. We have we
have froll codic dance performers in there. Really want to just encourage people.
You can buy those tickets on ourwebsite at think go to my old Denver
dot com. But it's it's alot of fun. I think you'd really
enjoy it if if you came andyou check all the i DS. Right,
(13:37):
yes, ma'am, And we suredo we that's our job for sure.
I've had teenagers. That's it wasthe first thought that grassed my mind.
Oh yeah, we have to dothat for sure. Okay, all
right, Well it sounds like alot of fun. And you know,
I'm concerned that I would have aboutthis thing, is the stinking parking and
(13:58):
that that would worry me come intothis festival. Yeah, I mean,
you know, it's it's it neverhas stopped people from coming to the festival,
I will say that. And youknow there's there there, there is
quite a bit of parking around theevent. You know, I always advocate,
I always advocate for car pulling andyou know, using your ubers or
(14:20):
lifts because those are really the bestway to get here, or if need
be parking, you know in uhuh somewhere where you can take in light
rail. That's always an option too. And the old woman in me wants
to know if you have a lotof restrooms. Oh, yes, we
sure do. Yeah, we absolutelydo. We have. We even have
(14:41):
handicapped restrooms everything people need. Yeah, absolutely yeah. Okay, okay,
all right, Well I've thoroughly enjoyedthis and we'll get it up and I'll
pass it all around the country andwe'll see what happens. Thank you so
much. I really appreciate the promotion. Thank you so much. I've been
I'm talking to you. Thank youme as well. Thank you. Have
(15:03):
a good one. Bye bye,bye bye.
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