ST. LOUIS • The city parks director is looking to bar a soul food and music festival from returning to Forest Park, following a “disaster” performance this past weekend which left fans angry and the park a mess.

The Kinfolks Soul Food Festival drew about 2,000 on Saturday to Art Hill, across from the St. Louis Art Museum, said city Parks Director Gary Bess, for what was supposed to be six hours of old-school funk and soul music.

But the gates opened late, patrons said, the lineup of bands began to drag, and, by 12:45 a.m. — nearly two hours later than scheduled — Bess said police had to shut down the concert.

Moreover, the festival didn’t provide trash cans, or at least not enough cans, and no one showed up after the event to clean up Art Hill. Bess arrived Sunday morning to “a couple hundred cubic yards” of cardboard boxes, plastic cups and Styrofoam food trays.

“The event was a disaster,” he said. “It was poorly organized. It was not very well attended. There was no effective plan to clean up the site. The production of the event itself was totally unacceptable.”

The promoter of the event, however, says that while his company made mistakes, it isn’t solely at fault for the problem-plagued event.