The Recess Music Festival has been axed is in danger of being axed by its host venue, Fort Lauderdale's Xtreme Indoor Karting, only a day before its scheduled launch. Update: Or has it just been postponed?
Everything seemed to be in order for the eight-hour "Electronic Music Festival" featuring four stages of DJs, the Electrick Pixies dance crew, and a pretty strict dress code for the all-ages crowd ("No Showing underwear, No Showing bra, No Shirtless") — until the Xtreme folks caught wind of the New Times calendar item written by Penn Bullock titled, "Let's Rave." So, this is probably partially our fault.
1 Up Productions' DJ Munkey, who is a Recess organizer, asserts that the event is not cancelled. "The event was supposed to be called Raver's Recess, but they didn't want any association with that word," he says of the venue. "There are no lights blinking and flashing or dark places, the event just has the same music as any electronic music festival. You can't drive go-karts in the dark."
At 6 p.m. on Wednesday, Recess Music Festival organizer Brandon Doherty sent this note to our feedback form:
"Thank you so much for posting an article about my event! if you ever want to doEarly Thursday afternoon, however, Xtreme Indoor Karting expressed its displeasure to us regarding the article. According to representative Doug Campbell, they booked the event under the impression that it was just a standard music show, but decided to cancel it after reading about the "junta of hot DJs," including Doherty's own DJ crew the Dutch Masters "for you to orgasm to," which has been listed in the Facebook event invite's description for weeks now. And 813 people had RSVPed.an interview or have any questions about the electronic dance music community
feel free to contact me."
"Xtreme is a family venue and would never allow a rave there," Campbell says. He adds that he has been calling, emailing, and texting the organizers of the event and hasn't heard back.
At about 2 p.m. on Thursday, Xtreme Indoor Karting posted this update on the Recess Music Festival's page:
(Note: we took Bullock's story down once the event was announced as cancelled.)
Since then, a flurry of angry comments have followed the update, ranging from "That's not very supportive," to "New Times tanked your event," to "Who reads that anyway, grandmas and
people in prison who can't afford a real newspaper?"
At 2:26 p.m., we received another note from "Recess DJ's," titled "'Xtreme'lly unprofessional (Xtreme Go Kart ruins event)":
A new article should be written about how Xtreme Indoor Go Kart cancelled"I can't pay my fucking rent now because they canceled this," organizer Brandon Doherty tells New Times. "I'm about tohosting Recess Music Festival less than a day from the event happening. This
killed the weekend for over 800 people that were going to attend. Even though
the event was cancelled, some people will still show up and Xtreme will reap the
benefit of free advertising done by all the people who put the event together
and your newspaper that put out an article on the innovation of the event. The
promoters, DJ's, and production companies have lost a lot of money that was
spent in preparation for the event.
Thank you for your time.
lose my shit." He went on to say he thinks he's going to get sued for $10,000.
A couple of thoughts:
According to any online dictionary of your choice — we chose the forward-thinking Urban Dictionary, but even the stodgy old sources say pretty much the same thing — a rave is defined as "a gathering of people centered around listening to and dancing to electronic music, as played by a set of live djs." If the Recess Music Festival was not intended to be exactly that, we're genuinely sorry for promoting the event as such.
It's unfortunate that Xtreme Indoor Karting waited to read New Times'
article to gain a full understanding of what the event they were
planning to host was all about. All of the information writer Penn
Bullock used in his story was obtained from the Facebook invite and the
event's organizers. If Xtreme had done even a fraction of that research,
they would've known what kind of event this was — rave or no rave — a long time ago.
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