The promoters and their backers must have thought it looked good on paper: Have a two-day concert in Calverton, Long Island, on the closed remains of the Grumman plant/airport some 70 miles east of NYC. Beck, Beastie Boys, Radiohead, Interpol, Spiritualized, Blur and many more. Plenty of room to camp out between the Saturday and Sunday lineup.
First environmental groups petitioned: The Grasshopper Sparrow lived in the grasslands off the runway of the defunct Grumman airport facility that will one day be subdivided into one acre million dollar homes!
Then Riverhead Township balked on providing local police. Then Suffolk PD. The Suffolk Health Department rescinded the “mass gathering permit” that would allow about 15,000 folks to camp overnight. Finally, the New York State Police said they couldn’t deal with it.
There’s another three-day concert in August at the same location.
The moral is: The Grasshopper Sparrow prefers briefcases full of cash if you want to have a concert on LI. If you use paper sacks full of money - at least obscure the $ signs?
The projected attendance wasn’t expected to be much more than the a sold-out concert @ Nassau Veterans Coliseum - probably the largest music venue on the island. Traffic would have probably been more conjested with the combination of Concertogers and Hamptoneer’s flying east on their weekly voyage, but most of their conjestion they suffer through is on the 27 bottleneck.
IMHO, the most of the blame can be layed at the feet of the NIMBY’s, who threw up as many roadblocks as they could muster. That being said, the promoters should have prepared their own security arrangements and not expected local police to carry the load. Maybe they should’ve subcontracted out those duties to the Angels or the Pagans.
The NIMBY atitiude permeating from the East End of Long Island is probably to greater than that of most suburban and urban areas of the country. A couple years back, alot of local LI’ers were smirking at the irony of local Hamptons residents fighting tooth and nail to close down a welfare hotel.
The August festival probably isn’t facing the same resistance as the Field Day festival because the generation making the rules is more apt to identify with Bob Dylan than they are Beck Hanson.
In any case, I hope Interpol wowed them as much in London as they do here in NY…in either case, it’s good to have them home.
I had a 2-day camping pass to Field Day. This whole drama drained a lot of my time and energy.
There’s now a 1-day concert at Giants Stadium, and original tickets aren’t being honored. Even though Radiohead is playing there, I’m not giving these promoters another dime of my money. Radiohead will tour again.
I blame both the NIMBYs and the promoter as well. The NIMBYs assumed that they’d have another Woodstock 99 on their hands, even though anyone with knowledge of the bands playing would see the show wouldn’t draw the “angst-ridden male” crowd that starts fires and has riots.
The promoter definitely should have pressed to get his permits done sooner.
So I’m deprived of a weekend I was looking forward to more than anything in a LONG time. But at least I’m getting my money back. Blech.