Massive Medieval Fest Quietly Excludes Its NYC Neighbors, Locals Say

UPPER MANHATTAN, NY — Tens of thousands of peasants, knights, jesters and damsels flocked to a hilly Manhattan park on Sunday to enjoy jousting, jigs, turkey legs and mead.

No, really.

The Medieval Festival in Fort Tryon Park — the largest Parks department event New York City hosts — returned to Upper Manhattan this year after a two-year hiatus.

New Yorkers not inclined to don tabards, doublets, and long pointed hats likely won't be surprised that they've never heard of the festival that celebrates a pre-renaissance way of life — even if it brings hordes 60,000 strong to the neighborhood.

"They don't do outreach and it shows that they don't care about the community," Juan Camilo, owner of uptown beloved brewery Dyckman Beer Co., told Patch.

"I've been trying to get into the festival for quite some time."

Absolute bloodshed and ecstasy in the Fort Tryon Park Medieval Festival. pic.twitter.com/O7QXfAJCrT
— Gus Saltonstall (@GusSaltonstall) October 2, 2022

For Camilo, it's not just a question of community but an opportunity to keep his local, minority-owned company in business in a post pandemic New York City plagued by inflation.

"They sell about $100,000 worth of beer during the day," Camilo noted. "So for me, even having about 10 percent of that is literally life changing."

Patch's investigation — which included visits to local businesses, interviews with civic leaders and repeated requests for detailed information from the nonprofit contracted to run the festival — uncovered a troubling trend.

Despite one organization's pledge to do local outreach and select 40 percent of its food and drink vendors from north of 96th Street, businesses blocks away from the park have no idea the festival even exists.

“I’ve been here for seven years," said an employee at the Mini Mart Deli at West 193rd Street and Broadway— a location just steps away from Fort Tryon Park. "I’ve never heard of that festival.”

Francisco Lopez, Community Board 12 Business Committee member, told Patch he's spent months unsuccessfully trying to get Washington Heights + Inwood Development Corporation (WHIDC) and Remarkable Foods Inc. — the company organizing food and drink for the festival — to engage with his community.

"As far as marketing to the uptown community members, specifically the Black Latino community members, they're certainly lacking," Lopez said.

"They don't go to the barbershops, they don't go to the beauty salon, they don't go where the people that are the predominant group in this community go."

Organizers did not responded to requests from Patch for more information until the week before the festival.

WHIDC — the event's key organizer — told Patch it could only discuss concerns from community members about the Medieval Festival once the event was over.

Remarkable Foods, the company organizing food and drink vendors, denied it had excluded local businesses.

"Unfortunately, this festival has me averaging three hours of sleep with no time to spare," Isaac Roldan, who represents and works for Remarkable Foods, told Patch. "However, I will say the following. Information you have received includes lies, omission and slander."

Ye Olde Medieval Festival

Washington Heights resident Anna Constantino couldn't wait to take her young son to the Medieval Festival she's been attending with her family since 1993, when she was only eight years old.

"As I got older, my friends and I would meet at the festival and would bump into lots of other acquaintances. It was just a fun time," Constantino told Patch. "It brings back good memories."

Constantino is one of an established 60,000 people who annually attend the festival — a Fort Tryon Park tradition since 1983 — just south of The Met Cloisters.

Its impressive attendance numbers make it the largest Parks-produced event of the year. For comparison, the next largest is Adventures NYC, which garners some 40,000 people over the course of a day.

WHIDC, a local businesses development nonprofit, has been helping to organize the event from the very beginning and became its main producer in 1988, according to its website.

Its primary projects are micro-and-childcare-business development, a CPR program and the festival, according to the WHIDC website.

A key part of WHIDC's role for the Medieval Festival is connecting entrepreneurs, performers and vendors with the chance to partake in the event.

This year's festival featured 36 performers, 19 retailers selling medieval-themed crafts and jewelry, and 10 food vendors, according to Parks department records and a list published by WHIDC the Friday evening before the festival.

Performers and craft sellers were selected from applicants who responded to outreach from WHIDC, an uptown local Business Improvement District, the Community League of the Heights, and other community partners, according to the Parks Department.

Just three of the 13 vendors that Patch could find a location for are based in Upper Manhattan, the Hudson Heights Art Studio, Cabrini Shine, and Gabriella@Gabriella's Getaways.

The other vendors were from places such as Maine, Florida, Staten Island, New Jersey and upstate New York.

Of the 35 performers, Patch was able to tie 10 to a specific location. Just one group — Los Mosquiteros Productions, a collective of uptown actors and singers — was from Upper Manhattan.

Other performers included Master of the Skies falconry from Pennsylvania, a juggler named Luther Banger from Iowa, and others that came from areas such as Lower Manhattan, Brooklyn and Long Island.

Vendors satisfying festivals-goers hunger and thirst were chosen this year by Remarkable Foods Inc., a private business brought on by WHIDC that, according to the Parks Department, had agreed to select 40 percent of its vendors from businesses north of 96th Street in Manhattan.

These are the vendors Camilo has been trying, and failing, to join for years.

There were a total of 10 vendors listed on WHIDC's website that were selling food or drink at the Medieval Festival, Patch counted 11 on site and was able to locate seven.

Two vendors have addresses in Harlem (one a New Jersey bakery that sells its sweets inside a Third Avenue Foodtown). One is on the Upper West Side just south of 96th Street. Another is north of 96th Street, but by approximately 170 miles (it's in an upstate town called Bainbridge.) Two are based in other boroughs.

The last vendor that served food at the festival? Remarkable Foods Inc., selling jerk chicken for $15 and turkey legs for $20, a price that startled at least one attendee.

"I was going to get a turkey leg," the woman said. "But it's twenty dollars."

A final vendor — the one that does not appear on WHIDC's list — appeared to be the lone entity selling beer on-site. It was a company called Budweiser, based in St. Louis, Missouri.

Beer and wine at the festival went for $13.

Dilena's Dolcini — the New Jersey based bakery business with the East Harlem grocery store stand — told Patch at the festival that Remarkable Foods Inc. reached out with an invitation to join the festival a month or two ago

The employee told Patch, "He really wanted to get local vendors."

• Anthis Greek Food: 614 Amsterdam Ave., near West 90th Street, on the Upper West Side
• Budweiser: St. Louis, Missouri
• Cesar Flores: Patch was unable to locate an address or contact information.
• Downeast Lobstah: Based in Harlem, but without a storefront.
• Dilena's Dolcini: Bakery in Teanneck, New Jersey and a stand at the Foodtown of East Harlem at 2211 Third Ave.
• La Braza: A pop-up based in Queens.
• La Victoria NYC: Patch's call to a number associated with the vendor was not answered.
• Magpie Mead: Bainbridge, in Upstate New York
• Remarkable Foods: Patch was unable to locate the business.
• Steph's Cake Shop: 1392 Rockaway Parkway in Canarsie, Brooklyn
• Tacos El Guero: Reached by phone, an employee said the vendor has no fixed location.

Ye Olde Fight With The Community Board

In 2019, Camilo — the Dyckman Beer owner who sells his brews at Yankee Stadium but has yet to crack the biggest event in his neighborhood's backyard — went to the festival to count the kegs.

Camilo wanted to know just how much money was at stake, so he tallied up the 60 120-pint kegs he counted in the festival beer garden going for between $11 and $13 a pint. To buy every drop of that would take roughly $86,000.

He wanted in.

"I've been knocking on the door pretty hard," Camilo said.

Only once before has WHIDC extended Camilo an offer to join the festival, he says — but not in the beer garden. He turned down the invitation to set up on the outskirts.

So this year, when his June application and July follow-up message were both ignored, Camilo decided to find out why, and took the fight to the local community board.

A high-ranking WHIDC staff member, responding to a CB 12 officer's request for more information, said Remarkable Foods Inc. was handling food and drink.

Lopez, who is also on the board's finance committee, also saw an opportunity to uplift local businesses in his community and reached out to Remarkable to request more outreach.

"One of the biggest festivals that the entire city of New York has, it's here in Washington Heights, run by a local financial organization that's supposed to help," Lopez explained.

"When you get out of the train, the A train or the 1 train, you don't see anything about the Medieval Festival," Lopez added. "There's no advertising, there's no posters, there's no banners, if you go to Fort Tryon Park you'll see them there, but that's it."

Washington Heights turf may be lacking in informational materials, but social media pages linked to WHIDC show that the local nonprofit has been doing some local outreach in the community since May.

WHIDC posted to Instagram five announcements that it was looking for vendors — the first one on May 31 and four in the last two weeks of August — and two alerts in July and August that it was looking for volunteers.

In an Instagram post made on Sept. 23, WHIDC gave a shout-out to a local group — Mosquiteros Productions — the lone uptown performer Patch was able to identify in the program for the festival posted by WHIDC.

WHIDC also made posts to its Facebook, Twitter and website about the festival.

Remarkable Foods' online presence consists of an Instagram account — the first two posts dated Sept. 2 and 3, one month before the festival — and a website that, at the time of publication, did not work.

The first two videos show Roldan entering two Washington Heights bakeries — El Panadero on West 179th Street and D'Lili Bakery on West 207th Street — and telling workers about the festival.

"Recruiting local businesses in Washington Heights to be a part of the Medieval Times Festival," first the caption reads.

Neither bakery was among selected vendors.

Those first Instagram posts were made after Lopez emailed Remarkable Foods in August, asking for a rep to come to a September Community Board 12 meeting to discuss partnering with local vendors, according to Instagram records and emails reviewed by Patch.

Those emails also show Roldan refused.

“Unfortunately Sept. 6 is far too late to address vendors," Roldan wrote on Aug. 23. "We are looking to book vendors immediately but do have interest in having local vendors participate.”

WHIDC, meanwhile, extended its application deadline to become a vendor at the Medieval Festival through Sept 30. WHIDC previously was only accepting vendor applications until the end of August.

WHIDC was sending out emails seeking applications for this year's festival as late as Sept. 21.

These Instagram posts and emails left Lopez wondering why outreach at a Sept. 6 Community Board meeting was too late.

“After receiving backlash from a previous post on this group, and then blocking me on [Instagram] because I challenged your ethics, all of a sudden, WHIDC and Isaac Roldan want to engage the community?” Lopez wrote in post to the Upper Manhattan Facebook group.

Roldan declined to be interviewed by Patch, but said he would be happy to share the “real truth” after the festival was over.

So one question remains: did the social media outreach work?

Ye Olde "It's In New Jersey, Right?"

Days before the Medieval Festival was set to take place, Patch visited Upper Manhattan businesses and popular restaurants among those closest to Fort Tryon Park.

Of the 11 uptown businesses visited, nine of them had never even heard of the Medieval Festival, let alone that it was happening on Sunday.

A woman working the counter at Perista Cafe at 158 Dyckman St. responded with excitement when asked whether she knew about the Medieval Festival.

"Yes! It's in New Jersey, right?"

"No, the one in Fort Tryon Park," Patch responded.

"This park?" She asked back with surprise. "No, never."

A group of employees standing outside of a hardware store on Broadway directly across from Fort Tryon Park said, "We've been told about it but I've never seen any posters or anything."

Patch walked 10 blocks in each direction on Wednesday from the recommended entrance point at Fort Washington Avenue and Margaret Corbin Circle for the festival.

Patch was not able to find a sign of any advertisement for the Medieval Festival outside of the park or one anywhere near the Dyckman 1 train station, which is one of the recommended train stops for the festival.

Patch did find a sign near the West 181st Street 1 train station for the festival, which was asking for volunteers.

Employees at MamaJuana Cafe at 247 Dyckman St. and IL Sole at 233 Dyckman St. — two of the most popular restaurants in Inwood — told Patch they had never heard of the Medieval Festival or knew it was happening on Sunday.

Despite a sizable group of uptowners not being familiar with the Medieval Festival, there are uptown residents who look forward to the event every year.

“It’s like an institution for this neighborhood," one uptowner wrote on Facebook. "People that I’ve grown up with in this neighborhood have gone to it for years.”

Other uptown residents say that the organizers of the festival are missing an opportunity to make the Medieval Festival unique to New York City.

“The festival organizers have an opportunity to engage and respect the community hosting the festival, to give it the Washington Heights touch,” uptown resident E Jeanne Harnois told Patch.

“Integrate the festival with the community that hosts it, don’t just swoop in and disappear the next day leaving nothing but deflated balloons.”