Restaurants suffer during Lakefair

I had the opportunity both Wednesday and Thursday evenings to visit Lakefair and eat at one of the downtown restaurants.

On Wednesday, I chose the Olympia Oyster House.  It had customers but it wasn’t full or even half full.  What happened later on in the evening I can’t say.

Thursday evening I went to Ben Moores and enjoyed the food as much as ever.  But my party was the only people at the restaurant.  Again, I can’t vouch for what happened later in the evening.

In both cases, I informed the staff that I was here because of Lakefair and asked them to pass along the word to the boss.

My point, and I do have one, is that perhaps dowtown merchants were right when they say that Lakefair doesn’t help their business.  Besides, it was almost impossible to find a place to park to actually get to the downtown restaurants.