Rock-Toberfest, an Oktoberfest in St. John's? Newfoundland's unique festival.

Prosit! Cheers! Beer!

An Oktoberfest at its core - though not just an Oktoberfest, but a fusion festival, many genres of music, food, dance and of course beer! A huge kitchen party, crossed with a beer garden, crossed with a music festival.

The plan is to bring a major new festival to St. John's at the end of September or early October, while the weather is still decent and to cap off a great year of festivals with a grand fusion of Rock, Traditional Newfoundland, and even Polkas and Oom-pah music. A little taste of Oktoberfest, but with a large twist of Newfoundland culture, music and love of a great party!

In Munich, and in Kitchener-Waterloo, there have been these fantastic festivals for years. They are huge gatherings where the rules are simple: Good Beer, Good Food, Good Music, and Good Hospitality. It sounds a lot like a Newfoundland and Labrador style party, and would be a natural for a city like St. John's, even though, we have a very small German population. We love our accordion music, we love to dance, we love our own variety of street food, and we love to welcome strangers to our parties! Throw in great beer, and some other fine beverages and you have a festival that will be an Oktoberfest at the core, yet totally new!

Already we have strong support from the home of Canada's biggest Oktoberfest - Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario. There are Oktoberfests to be found world wide, from Texas, Denver, Seattle, Australia, Brazil and even Japan, but only Munich, Germany does a bigger Oktoberfest than Kitchener-Waterloo, right here in Canada. Their festival started as a city festival back in 1969, with just a handful of people, a budget of $200 and the support of the city's German clubs. Soon there was help from a German Tourism official and their little festival brought in almost 75,000 people. 57,000 gallons of beer. 50,000 sausages eaten. For an event that ran from Tuesday to Saturday - that is incredible!.

Today, the Kitchener-Waterloo Oktoberfest sees more than 700,000 people attending 16 festhalls, and over 40 other cultural and family events. A "festhall" is a building or tent that holds between 250 and more than 3,500 people. Everything from service clubs, to arenas, to wedding halls and giant festival tents has been used in the past. Tickets are sold in advance, with the supervision and guidance of the Oktoberfest committees, the various regulations pertaining to alcohol, and large gatherings are followed closely.

One event in particular to note, is the Molson sponsored Rocktoberfest. One night during the festival when popular rock bands share the stage with the legends of Oktoberfest music. Each doing their own thing and then jamming - polka-style for an enthusiastic and appreciative crowd. A concept that could really be expanded upon in Newfoundland with all of our great rock and traditional bands and artists.

The idea being to offer a St. John's festival audience our own version of festhalls, many locations within the Metropolitan St. John's region, where for a long weekend, Friday to Sunday. People could see on the same stage, a variety of musical styles and dancers. Some bands and traditional dancers brought in from Kitchener-Waterloo to add the authentic Oktoberfest flavour, but sharing the stage with Newfoundland step-dancers, fiddlers, accordion players, Irish tenors, Rock bands of every description, cover bands who really know how to get a party going - entertainment for different ages and different cultures. Events could be spread mainly around the larger venues in the area (eventually), but also among the smaller clubs. For more details, read about the Festhall Model.

The first version is expected to be mainly a beer-garden type festival, but once established, we hope to add a wide variety of family-friendly events. Dancing and music, cook-offs and BBQs, costumes, marching bands, karaoke contests, a multitude of opportunities to promote fund-raisers that fit with the festival theme, perhaps even a parade some day.