News reports are coming out about a luxury music festival in a private island in the Bahamas wherein people paid thousands of dollars for a dream weekend of music and great food. They got there and now have no food or any place to stay as everyone pulled out and now can’t get back. Rolling Stone has an exclusive interview with the 25 year old organizer who says, amongst other things, that he learned a lot and plans to start sooner next year.
Um, … does he think people will pay money for this again next year?
I’m into the whole music festival thing so I had been hearing about this festival and all the hype for months. Sounded like a bit much and quite expensive. Then I started seeing the stories this afternoon. Wow, what a clusteryouknowwhat!
Don’t worry he’s going to try again next year! He learned so much this time around. As comical as that is, I don’t think he realizes yet that he’s going to be a punchline for the rest of his life. I could write a Johnny Carson style monologue using this event within 15 minutes. His legal problems are going to be epic. He made all these promises and then delivered none of them. Oh, brother. United Airlines is happy because they just moved to page 2 of the news now while the media descends on this poor fool. Geez, at least this guy didn’t kill a big bunny. What do you think about the aggressive dogs running around the place and the natives getting mad and meanwhile the concert goers can’t get out! Oh, well, they do have cheap meat and cheese sandwiches to tide them over!
Lawyers are going to be drooling at this one, but I wonder if this clown even has any kind of insurance, I suspect if those going sue it will all go to the lawyers. I wonder if this kid realizes that with something like this, promoted apparently as a luxury experience, there is no second chance…
I read that New Yorker article and OMG - locked into a room at the airport for hours with no food or water? And they were the lucky ones? What a disaster.
I think music festivals have gone a bit too far. I thought Coachella was a fashion event for a long time because so much of the news about it concerns which beautiful people are there and what are they wearing. Ugh.
I saw a video of them being locked in - literally with a chain and big padlock. They all seemed to be complacent about it. All I could think was “What if there was an emergency and they needed egress through that door??”
I am partial too “rich kids of Instagram meets Hunger Games.” I think the Bahamian Tourist authority is making some lame efforts to help because have the locals mug and rob the rich kids of Instagram is so not good for future tourism. I don’t think the vicious ferral dogs helps either. Truly a nightmare. The lawyers are lining up as we speak. I love that the broke (and he hasn’t even begun to feel the pain yet) 25 year old organizer plans to try again next year. It is like failing a test. No big deal. Just shrug your shoulders and ask the teacher for the do over. Nothing lost. And you don’t need to read books. You can read them IF you need to know what’s in them no need to read then beforehand. I mean, even after all the you know what hits the fan, he STILL doesn’t get it.
Snopes has a story on this that includes photos of the “gourmet meals” that ended up being a slice of bread, 2 slices of processed chees (think unwrapped Kraft singles), and some lettuce. Other photos as well.
I can’t wait until the late night comediennes get a hold of this. If there isn’t a writer’s strike. Again, the airline industry should be thrilled that this happened because all they did was beat up one customer and take away one mom’s stroller. The organizers of this thing really screwed with hundreds of people. It is like watching an oral presentation when some millennial gets up there totally unprepared and you can’t help but laughing. How do you promise luxury accommodations and food and deliver known of it? Why didn’t he call it off weeks before people got on planes when he knew he had screwed up big time? It is mind boggling.
Six weeks before the event the WSJ did an article pointing out some problems and the organizers replied with a few press releases doubling down. Alternate reality strikes again! They had to know they weren’t ready. Rarely do I agree with the lawyers and lawsuits but in this case I hope the lawyers clean house.
If you want to be entertained, google Fyre Festival and notebook. Someone found a notebook belonging to the organizers. A simple legal pad with all the notes on it and list of stuff to buy - soda, candy, cigarettes, etc. I don’t think these guys could run a decent lemonade stand.
He’s learned a lot and is going to make major changes. Next year it’s going to be held in North Korea and United Airlines has already signed on as a major sponsor.
Perhaps it really was a performance art installation where rich people found out what is like to live on $12,000 per year. Crappy food, unsafe environment, iffy water…
It could also be a poorly conceived and planned version of a politicized practical joke I can see someone from Oberlin pull on his/her fellow upper/upper-middle class(upper echelons) folks to see their reactions and to make political points/theater.
Better planned version of this would be as another commenter suggested…hold it in NK or a place like it so the punchline is apparent…and the orchestrator/chief fraudster cannot be found and thus feasibly sued/criminally prosecuted for the fraud.
The fact he was 25 years old isn’t necessarily an indication of lack of organizational capabilities.
Plenty of examples of successful 25 year olds or younger who successfully planned similar/larger scale events.
One example are military officers who planned campaigns during WWII such as Captain/Major Robin Olds who was a fighter squadron operations officer at 23 years of age. And there were plenty of successful organizers and leaders who were 25 and under if one googles.
In this case, this is an indictment of the organizer’s own characteristics/failure to plan/get it together…not his age.
Yeah. But the fact he is 25 makes it even better/funnier. I’m sure it isn’t funny for the people on the ground. Insert whatever spoiled immature young jet setter joke floats your boat here.
I think in the Rolling Stone exclusive article I read, or perhaps it was somewhere else, the organizer has some other scam/failed/about to be sued by his own customers/you can’t be that stupid and be part of my species business venture related to exclusive credit cards he sold to millennials that went horribly, comically and predictably wrong. So who will play him in the Hollywood bio-pic? My money is on Jonah Hill.
In addition, I read that things started to go south when “investors” failed to materialize. Agh, the proverbial investors failed to pony up enough cash to make it rain AFTER the social media “influencers” like Emily Ratajkowski and Bella Hadid had already done the marketing and gotten actual customers to transfer in actual money. By the way, you won’t need money at the event. You don’t need money in paradise. Just send in your money now and everything will be taken care of for you at the event including music, gourmet food and, of courses, models. So after they had marketed the event that is when they got around to the operating issues like actually creating a city on a tropical island including infrastructure like electricity and bathrooms.
Hmmmm.
What could possibly go wrong?
They even hired people to fly down to the island and plan things.
But no one was there to tell them what to do.
There was some work done but if you were there early and you couldn’t see this train wreck coming all I can say is … really?