OBF 2006

This weekend, May 20-21, marks the staging of the 12th annual Orange Blossom Festival in downtown Riverside. Although the festival has encountered a few bumps and bruises recently, it remains one of the largest and most successful yearly community festivals in Southern California, typically drawing crowds in excess of 250,000.

The OBF began in 1994 as homage to the city's long-forgotten, but highly successful "Orange Day" festivals during the early 1900s, which celebrated and promoted the city's navel orange industry. The first few years of the reincarnated festival were quite successful, so much so the event soon outgrew its own britches and, as can be expected in such matters, eventually lost a bit of focus as it marched toward self-support (i.e., "commercialization") from a city-sponsored festival. Fortunately, the governing committee has heard the suggestions ("more orange, less carnival") and begun to bring the event back around to its original focus of celebrating the region's historic "orange empire."

However, it is the opinion of this site that at least one other basic aspect of the festival -- the knee-jerk change made 2 years ago moving the festival one month from late April to late May -- needs to be reverted. The move was made immediately following an unseasonably rainy weekend that dampened festival attendance in 2004. Though the rain indeed did affect attendance that weekend, the fact is the festival had already been experiencing flat or declining attendance in recent years. The move to May last year proved less of a savior as attendance remained relatively flat, in part due to the warmer May temperatures. Moreover, the move has not exactly wiped out the possibility of rain, as this weekend's forecast calls for rain on Sunday. But above all, the festival simply belongs in April -- period.

With that said, the festival remains a good time for all ages -- not too mention good exposure for both downtown and Riverside in general.

Enjoy!

Related

• Orange Blossom Festival Association