I'm posting here for the first time in God knows how long to complain about the terrible weekend I'm having, and the complete and total failure that is Minitek, New York's Electronic Music & Innovation Festival.
So this is something I've been looking forward to for a long time now. To begin with, the lineup was crazy, way, way better than we usually see in the US (at least outside DEMF and WMC) when it comes to electronic music, and the promoters who were running it are pretty well known for throwing great parties in NYC. I bought tickets in June and have pretty much been counting down the days. Granted, there were a lot of signs even before this weekend that kind of pointed towards the fact that this festival was going to fail miserably, but that's not the point (and it sounded so awesome), so here's what happened:
Last night was supposed to be the opening night at Penn Plaza, I was all ready to get dressed and go out at around midnight when I find out...the line is like a thousand people and they're not letting anyone in. Nobody knows what happened because the promoters haven't even issued a statement (!), all anyone knows
is that the wouldn't let anyone in after around midnight and the cops shut it down sometime after 3AM. Then they moved it to a different venue, which no one knew about. Also this entire time it was raining pretty badly.
So today, everyone is pissed and no one really knows what's going on. So they have their day event, which is over at Coney Island. Except it was supposed to start at 10, and at noon they hadn't even set up gear yet and nobody was playing. At around 2 the thing finally starts, but there were still rumors of cops running around and questions about whether the whole festival was just going to be canceled. Then I decide that maybe I should just go over, until I find out that the trains aren't even running to Coney Island. You have to get off at Brighton Beach and walk over, which is like apparently a 40 minute walk (I've never done it). That whole area is kind of shady and I didn't want to be walking around alone (at this point all my friends have decided that Minitek is a waste of time, a total failure, and have gone off to do other ****). The festival is going right now, but I'm not going to sit on the train for an hour each way, wait for god knows how long just to get in, just for 2 or 3 hours of music.
So also they're having another night event at Studio B. Which is annoying, because Penn Plaza was 18+ and Studio B isn't (it's unclear whether they're making an exception for this because Minitek already said that their night events were 18+). This is pretty bad for me, and it would be a complete waste of time to ride the train a half hour over to Brooklyn with basically no one there with me, just to get there and not even get in. It's especially annoying because I've been planning to get a fake ID for weeks now, but decided to hold off until the end of the month because I didn't think I'd need it yet. Oh yeah, I also forgot to mention that Studio B closes at 4, even though the event is supposed to end at 8AM, and everybody good goes on AFTER 4.
Sorry for the long post about something that no one probably even cares about, this whole thing is just so frustrating and so disappointing. Completely unprofessional on the part of the promoters, and with every problem that keeps slowly popping up it's like watching the Titanic sink. Also this means that my entire weekend is basically ruined because I didn't go out at all yesterday thinking I'd be staying up late, I didn't do anything today because I was trying to figure out what was happening, and I'm probably not going to do anything tomorrow when I try to get a hold of someone who can refund me my ticket cost (unless, through some miracle, the Sunday event goes off without a hitch, in which case I'll still want a partial refund anyway, since I bought a weekend pass). This whole thing is just a total disaster.
EDITED FOR MORE BITCHING: I just found out that Studio B is barely a 400 capacity venue. Ha, good job Minitek! Also it IS 21+, and the only other event tonight related to this is at Webster Hall. And they're not accepting Minitek tickets. And it's $30. And it's 19+.
