Janet (and everyone),
We have been giving this a lot of thought. We have had the Boardie Bash running annually since 1999. With the last two years the Boardie Bash being cancelled due to Covid, this has given us time to evaluate the re-inventing of the Boardie Bash.
As you pointed out, this has been held on the last Friday in April since the mid 2000's to extend the busy season that technically ends April 15th. We have been successful in doing just that as it's now known around town about the "late April group" that always comes down.
Two things are determining how to proceed in the future. With the incredible success of the Contributions to Small Businesses and the St. Anthony Kitchen this past year, we know that you all want to help Negril as much as you can. And this year the reservations seem to be strong into the late spring and early summer, somewhat making less of a need to "extend" the April 15th busy season as it looks to be extending itself due to pent up travel demands.
Rather than just cancel the event after two decades, we would like your opinion and ideas about making it more of a Boardie Bash Week, without having one main event that only helps a single Negril business. Some ideas are a different meeting place each day for say three days before the last Friday in April and then 3 days after the last Friday. This would help us include people who leave before or arrive after the last Friday.
Other options could include a Pub Crawl as the main event on the last Friday.
We have nearly 6 weeks to devise and revise the planned events, so let us know in this thread or by PM what are your feelings and ideas.
Thanks for getting the discussion started!
