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South Jersey Rock Festival to Rival Bonnaroo
By
John Del Signore
Published Nov 29, 2007
Modified Mar 7, 2008
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By
John Del Signore
Published Nov 29, 2007
Modified Mar 7, 2008
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The south Jersey town of Vineland – or “shithole Vtown” as some locals call it – will host a massive three-day rock festival with camping this August. The Vineland Festival will be presented in a partnership between the company that resurrected Lollapalooza in Chicago and U.K. concert promoter Melvin Benn, who has managed the Reading Festival. No acts have been announced but that hasn’t stopped promoters from setting their price: a three-day pass, which includes camping and parking, will cost about $225, bro.
The event is set to take place on 570 acres of farmland with the capacity to accommodate 80,000 concertgoers, though promoters assured the town with a straight face that the first year will be smaller in scale, with "an expected audience of 10,000 to 20,000 people." As was the case with 2003’s ill-fated Field Day festival intended for Long Island, local residents have been immediately skeptical of the announcement, despite the Vinetown mayor’s rosy prediction of “hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue for local businesses”. Some of the objections posted on the local paper’s comment board will surely be voiced when the mayor reveals more details at Vineland City Hall on December 6th:
- How will local merchants make money from an event that so far away from any kind of shopping?
- How will this tax our local services like our short handed police department?
- Please remember NO RAP GROUPS so we can enjoy sometime as adults and not have the "riff raff" hanging around starting trouble!
- My biggest concern is the traffic!
- Can people going to this event be allowed to use the lake on the map?
The traffic complaints, xenophobia and hand-wringing about law enforcement are to be expected from small town America, but there’s a lake at the site!? Organizers are going to want to drain that most ricky-tick – nothing raises a festival’s death toll faster than a body of water, calling out to revelers across the nitrous tanks, Jäger bottles and 4-foot bongs like Davy Jones.
Photo of Lollapalooza crowd by Cambria Harkey.
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John Del Signore
Originally from the Albany area, John Del Signore has called NYC home since 1995. In addition to his thousands of meticulously-crafted bespoke blog posts for Gothamist, his writing has also been published in The Awl, Deadspin, The Nervous Breakdown, and performed at The Brick Theater in Brooklyn.
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