HARDFail

Picture Source: http://www.countessian.com/

Many people by now have heard of what happened at Hard Summer 2009, which touted headliners Underworld, Chromeo, Crookers, and many more. The music got stopped about 2 hours in and the event was completely shut down by the fire and police departments in Inglewood, home of the event’s location – The Forum. While Rob was actually at the event, I was at home still awake working on a mix at home. I got numerous texts which led me to the mass amount of Tweets about the event. Soon, youtube videos were posted, and the anger flooded out. A good write-up of what happened comes from LA Weekly.

This reminded me of when I was at ETD Pop in San Francisco (2008) and the power went out during Tiesto’s set. People got extremely angry, threw bottles at Tiesto, booed and hissed, then went home as the police arrested people for fighting and rioting in the parking lot. That was no fun. After getting home, I first read conspiracy theories about undercover police shutting down the event, but ultimately after about 2 weeks it was determined that the power for the whole area went out, and nothing could have been done to prevent this from happening. Case closed.

But the case is very much not closed on HardFest, whose website has the following explanation:

We were required to shut down Hard Summer at The Forum last night by the Los Angeles County Fire Department. They declared the event a “hazard” after seeing concertgoers jumping from the balcony to the floor, along with numerous other potentially dangerous activities. The Inglewood Police Department backed the decision of the Fire Department and assisted in the clearance of the venue. Click to read the LA TIMES coverage.

While we, the promoters, worked with the authorities to consider other options to continue the concert, ultimately they made the decision based on the safety of the concertgoers. We are happy to report that there were no major injuries.

We are offering refunds to all concertgoers.

Sounds pretty easy – blame the dangerous activities and the police, get your refund, come to Hard Haunted Mansion at the same venue for Halloween! Case Closed? I don’t think so. Read on for a more thorough analysis…

Based on what I have read and understood, the blame is not so easily placed on the attendees who jumped from the seats down to the floor. There were numerous problems, starting with the promoter.

PROMOTER:

Overcapacity – The event was intended by the Hard promoter, Gary Richards, to have a capacity of 15,000. A report from LA Weekly (here) confirms the fact that the event was over capacity by 2,500 according to a police count. How the police does their count is uncertain, but I think it can be certain (judging from the fact that people weren’t allowed to go down to the main stage) that the main room was over capacity.

Information – Watching all the youtube videos and talking to my friends, it sounds like everyone was kept in the dark by the man on the microphone (not sure who it was), who angrily told people to get out of the aisles and seats in order to get clearance from the fire marshall. Sure, it’s frustrating when people don’t cooperate, but calling them names won’t help, and neither will the lack of information coming from the man with the mic, the only one able to tell the crowd what’s going on.

Venue - While the forum supposedly has a capacity of 18,000 for “concerts”, the fact that Richards planned for 15,000 even with multiple stages means he was aware of the fact that the venue couldn’t hold a ton of people. Of course, I would argue that the capacity should accomodate about 90% of the total due to people going to the main stage for the big headliners or big events (this problem has come up, for example, with the main arena being shut off during Bennassi and Guetta at EDC or the New Years countdown at TAO), but that’s wishful thinking.

Another big issue is that the forum’s dancefloor doesn’t appear to hold the majority of its capacity. In fact, it seems like a lot of the concertgoers were forced to go up into the seating areas and already couldn’t come down to the dance floor to dance only 2 hours after the event started! Which brings me to the other side of the issue:

RAVERS:

Little Children: There were some there, and others were behaving like it. The fact that the event is too crowded does NOT mean it’s okay to jump down to the dance floor. I’m sorry that you spent a lot of money on the event and can’t get down there at the moment, but that doesn’t warrant causing others and yourself harm. Read this response on the LA Times post:

I was an attendee at Hard summer and I don’t know what a “serious injury” encompasses, but I was one of the concertgoers who jumped from the upper to lower floor. I did this because as prijacash.com said, I had saved money in this recession of ours to go to a DANCE party and dance the night away, NOT to SIT on the upper lever. It was a poorly planned out event, and my decision to try to get my moneys worth by jumping to the lower level has left me in two casts. I broke my right heel bone, and sprained my left foot. So yes, there were injuries. This event had the potential to be a great one, if only it was planned out a bit better and in a different venue where there would be enough room for everyone to fit on the DANCE floor. This night was an epic fail. And my body is literally broken.

Whatever the event advertised and whatever happened – was this a smart thing to do?

Rioting: Same applies for the other behavior that happened that night. The fact that things aren’t going your way doesn’t mean you get to grab the reins and go wild. There were reports of people bum-rushing the entrances (thus increasing capacity even more), throwing bottles, tipping porta-potties, and getting in fights. Just like throwing a bottle at Tiesto at POP didn’t turn the power back on, throwing bottles at others or the stage will only anger the police more and increase their perception of danger. Don’t ruin it for everybody else if  you’re unhappy.

CONCLUSIONS:

Well the first conclusion is that what happened on Saturday will have aftershocks on electronic events around LA. HARD’s reputation has taken a huge hit, and they must redeem themselves on Halloween. They have already taken steps to do so, by offering refunds to Hard Summer ravers as well as  possibly changing the venue from The Forum (now it says “undisclosed location”). It would also be nice if HARD admitted to the issues above instead of simply blaming the people jumping to the floor. Not cool.

Hopefully other promoters will learn from this as well, such as GoVentures, who are planning on increasing the capacity of Monster Massive, which is an event that sees huge numbers and has already had to deal with capacity issues (access to the main stage was not allowed for quite some time last year).

Ravers themselves also need to rethink what to expect, and how to act, at events. First, let’s make these 18+ and actually CHECK ID. It’s clear that being lax on these rules to make extra cash isn’t worth it in situations like this where immaturity can lead to big problems. While you should expect to have a good time, if something goes wrong, staying calm and avoiding trouble is the way to go. There are always plenty of police and narcs at these events who are itching to bust people fighting or causing trouble, and there are always other suspicious characters looking to take advantage of confused people.

Lastly, I hope I am speaking for the majority of EDM fans in LA when I say that THIS CANNOT HAPPEN AGAIN. Having such major troubles with the police and fire department tarnishes the reputation of dance events, and a couple more of such mishaps could bring the whole scene down. We are having fun. The scene is growing.

Don’t ruin it for all of us.

© 2009, M Silin. All rights reserved.