So are any of you planning on participating in the Slow Food Nation events in late August?

I've been browsing the site this afternoon and, I mean, okay, look, it's all great. The day trips to the creameries of Marin sound totally awesome, "mysterious Bolinas," sure, etc. I guess the source of my confusion is about who these events are for. Will there be a big influx of foodie tourists from around the country coming to the Bay Area to eat slow? Is it mostly a chance for locals to see what's been in their own backyards all the time, just for $130-160? I'm completely with the politics of it, and undoubtedly will trek to the Civic Center on my Friday lunch break to see the (free) spectacle, but how will it be much different than, say, any Saturday at the Ferry Building?

I'm not asking any of this rhetorically, but seriously, I wonder?

If the idea is that San Francisco is a good inaugural place for such a festival, which will then move on to less like-minded regions, I get it. After all, it's a fitting time for me to be thinking about the Slow Food thing--I just got back from visiting Kansas City, Missouri. It's not that I eat so terribly when I visit there, there is a city cuisine that is terribly satisfying, artery-ruining, and greed-inducing. But the concepts which guide my everyday consumer choices as a Bay Area person interested in food and eating primarily, and the politics of food and eating secondarily, the trope of the "local," etc., are totally absent from food culture in a major Midwestern metropolis like KC. There are individual chefs and restaurants, from what I hear, interested in changing things. But the metropolitan area as a whole? Forget it. Which is why I think Kansas City would be a terrific place for Slow Food '09.