I look forward to the deeper investigative reporting on precisely how that mess worked out as badly as it did, but the combination of promise-vs-reality mismatch and the rough PR afterwards suggests incompetence on all levels.
2017 is the "back to school" year. Things people have learned so far are "harder than they thought":
- health care reform
- large scale events
I look forward to seeing what knowledge gets (re)discovered next
- NATO
- NAFTA
- Chinese / Korean relations
- Department of Energy(And the author is a she)
I agree with your statement, but I'm not even sure it applies here. The organizers were charging up to $400,000 a ticket (!) including promises of chartered planes and geodesic domes. They provided none of it, the location is described as "dangerous", and it appears no performers showed up. But they did provide some sort of commercial flights back, which probably cost about $199 each. Sounds like a profitable scheme, particularly if the organizers are basically unknown and now simple disappear with the cash.
I doubt the infrastructure was up to the standards of the club scene, but it's not like there aren't medical facilities, food, or water on Great Exuma.
Even dropping a larger number of festival attenders (on an island with a normal population of 7,000), we're talking "dangerous" conditions in terms of "there's no air conditioned room for me to wait in" and "why hasn't anyone offered me champagne and caviar yet"?
These kids need to learn to appreciate the beauty around them (it's an absolutely gorgeous place) and quit bitching that they don't have everything handed to them on a silver spoon.
Or in other words, try traveling instead of being a tourist.
I haven't seen that figure anywhere, even the yacht rent ticket was 'only' $150,000 for ten people, including staff.
As you say it's schadenfreude, nothing at all to be proud of?
True it's an emotion that we all have, don't deny it, but to revel in the failure of things is pretty negative.
'deeper investigative reporting' is just people fucked up big time. There is nothing to learn at this level, you/we are just loving schadenfreude is what's really going on.
I'd thought it an impossible task to put on a good food based festival for a long time but Gilroy did a pretty good job with their Garlic festival. The trick seemed to be have about 5 stalls for every vendor and stick them in opposite edges so if the line is long at the Garlic Ice Cream booth you just keep walking around the edge a bit to the next booth from the same company selling the same stuff.
Yeah, this seems to be getting more common (maybe because the people running the festivals make a nice profit?).
I was at a hot wings festival recently. In a two-hour line for 4 wings. Then they ran out of wings, beer, and all liquids, including water. It ended up being ~$10/wing, 1 wing/hour.
I've seen some pretty epic failures, especially if they do good early on and get too much exposure. There was a garlic festival in the Hudson Valley that got way too much exposure on Food Network and was turned into an overcrowded nightmare. (Amplified by the number of Manhattanitrs out of their native environment)
Another one was a food truck festival where they spread the thing out too wide, so you had to be on a death march to actually see everything!
Sidewalk Film Festival
Sloss Fest
Brew Fest
Slice Fest
Secret Stages
I'm not sure if it is the local support or that they're just smaller. I expect we may have had a lot of excellent event organizers with solid experience looking for new jobs after City Stages wound down. City Stages was a 20+ year music festival that was generally successful logistically, but wasn't profitable.
When you think of it, though. If there are 5+ 10-20k attendance festivals every year in every metro area over 500k there are bound to be some regular screwups.
And port-o-potties always suck.
OktoberFest London 2015 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/shopping-and-consumer-news/1...
Jabberwocky (I had tickets to this) http://www.nme.com/news/music/various-artists-2392-1244501
I remember at least another one which was cancelled on the day due to overcrowding which I can't seem to find right now.
http://www.tampabay.com/things-to-do/food/spirits/cigar-city...
To be fair to Cigar City, they learned their lesson and as far as I've heard, subsequent festivals were great.
It's an example of how "move fast and break things" can work out poorly when the things being broken end with with people stranded away from home without access to basic sanitation.
They claim to have a talent booking service now, and it's web-based.[2] There's no big advantage in moving it to an app. There are already at least six other talent booking apps.
[1] https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/company-behind-di... [2] http://fyreapp.com/talent
Although people paying that kind of money want a tad bit more than minimum.
[edit] I really don't want to make fun of other people's misfortune, but I couldn't help but think that would have made an awesome setting for a sequel to Tucker & Dale vs. Evil.
Edit: I went through my browser history and the Twitter handle is correct.the article was actually on BuzzFeed but it's been scrubbed since last night. The author's name is Madeline Scott and the title started with "is fyre festival the next big music event or..." Maybe there's a cahe of the article somewhere?
It's the opposite, isn't it? You can predict what a group of people will do on average, but you can't know whether a specific person picked out of that group will be average, or an outlier.
No, its neither. Or both. Whatever. That is, there are fairly narrow circumstances where, with sufficient information about an individual, individual behavior is well predictable and fairly narrow circumstances where group behavior is predictable, but neither is actually all that predictable reliably (there's lots of people trying to do both, and the notable successes -- which involve lots of luck -- can make it look like either is more reliably predictable than it is.)
https://twitter.com/storeyfrizzell/status/858091444275302400
> I'd rather be on a yacht out of touch with reality. We all our preferences; some just are unable to have them
> Just bc I'm rich doesn't mean I don't have problems. In fact I've been devastated about the furniture my decorator chose
> I'm funemloyed, much better than actually being employed. Try it sometime...if you can
Regardless, in general, disliking people just because they're rich seems unhelpful and a quick way to jealously and discontentment. Being angered by wealthy individuals who actively abuse those with less is an entirely different story though.
I didn't say that I dislike rich people, I was just saying that a mutual hatred between classes seems to be common in today's America. Her recent Twitter feed puts that on full display.
who cares?
:(
Rich people got disappointed, okay.
Some recent years, found with zero Google-fu:
2013:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/10518992/Winter-Wonde...
'Poundland Santa' - funny!!!
2014:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/celebritynews/11248745/Laure...
'a visit to Father Christmas will never be the same again...'
2008:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1090931/Furious-pare...
'Challenging: The 'Nativity scene' could only be reached across a muddy field'
2016:
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/bad-santa-gets-sack-smo...
'One mum who visited the Christmas gala event in Cumbria, which cost £25 for a family of four, said her kids had more fun walking home'
Clearly this is a list that gets added to every year and I am wondering whether this would make an interesting day out, to go to a real life version of Banksy's take on a theme park.
The failed festival is in the same league however I think there is added reason for failure. Back in the day of illegal raves there was no option of failure because people would bring their own entertainment (yes, probably drugs) and be prepared for no facilities except for a sound system or two. Events were participatory, people got on with it and didn't wait around expecting to be entertained.
"... those who met with the organisers of the Fyre Festival shared that the timeframe was far too short for such an ambitious event ... organisers were again advised to reschedule the event to avoid competing with the famous 60 and more-year-old George Town regatta ... this Regatta is the highlight of the George Town social calendar. All hotel rooms, transportation, taxis and majority of the rental houses are booked years in advance for this week. Clearly, this would pose a logistical nightmare and preclude any additional tourists or locals from attending such an event as Fyre Festival."
This is in spite of the fact that throughout the region, much larger and more elaborate events occur frequently, e.g. carnival in Trinidad (and everywhere else), St. Lucia Jazz Fest, Reggae Sumfest, SXM, countless large sporting events like the ICC Cricket World Cup, etc.
I'm performing at a new one called Tmrw.Tday in Negril in two weeks - luckily the Fyre thing happened too late to affect ticket sales for that one I think.
[1] http://nypost.com/2017/05/04/fyre-festival-organizer-is-faci...