Bushwacker Festival Web Blues

If you google the popular Pensacola Beach "Bushwacker Festival" you'll see more messages from frustrated folk pleading for information than information itself. It seems it has always been thus, as we've mentioned before.

One reason may be that the original festival promoter, June Gerra of Capt'n Fun, and her computer never managed to get past the Let's-Forward-This-Funny-Joke email stage in life. And she's probably too.... ah... um... frugal to pay for web help.

That doesn't strike us as especially smart if you want to keep those music-and-booze fans coming to the beach for the end of summer celebration. Judging from various internet search reports we see, many of those who like to attend the Bushwacker Festival begin searching the web for the dates and bands line-up as early as May. But they can't even find a web site for Capt'n Fun, much less one devoted to the Bushwacker festival itself.

This isn't it. It's a runner's web site. Neither is this. That's just another stupid Facebook page by some Bushwacker fan, as near as we can tell.

Why there's such neglect of internet marketing for the Bushwacker Festival when the Island Authority and Pensacola Beach chamber of commerce devote so much money to "promoting tourism" is a mystery to us, especially when the Bushwacker Festival is justly billed as a "major event" for Pensacola Beach.

As of today, there are now a couple of places you can go for this year's event. The Pensacola Beach chamber of commerce, at long last, has posted a detailed schedule for the 2008 Bushwacker Festival, although it appeared only in the past week or so.

And the Sandshaker Bar, under new management after the U.S. Marshals auctioned it off, has begun to do some promoting. They have a mostly fictitious "History of the Bushwacker." (In truth, it's basically a frozen Brandy Alexander.)

Recently, they added a cheesy graphic (left) with, sadly, little information and rotating old photos of Mari Gras revelers. Mardi Gras? What's up with that?

Here it is, just three days before the big weekend, and still the Sandshaker's web site shows no August calendar.