I knew it, I knew it! Although, according to the LA Times, this is even worst than I had imagined it to be: ‘Taxpayers may wind up paying about $170,000 to cover expenses associated with Made in America’, the festival organized in Los Angeles by Jay Z this summer, in parallel with the one happening in Philadelphia… How is this possible? They even had promised us it would make money!
LA Mayor Eric Garcetti and his aides have estimated the cost of the festival at $670,000, whereas Live Nation only paid $500,000 for police patrols, street closures, trash removal… so who is going to pay for the extra? I just want to say a big huge f…k you to Jay Z and his buddy Garcetti who played a major role in bringing the festival to LA. Not only he was wrong, but he doesn’t want to recognize his mistake: ‘We will absolutely net more as a city than we would” if it hadn’t happened’, he said. “I’m confident of that.’ Because Kanye West sang in front of the city Hall? Give me a break, this is pathetic, I am not paying my taxes to fulfill Garcetti’s extravaganza.
James O’Sullivan, president of the Miracle Mile Residential Association, is equally outraged: ‘I just don’t think the city should pay a penny. How many sidewalks can that pay for? How many pipes can it fix? That crucial infrastructure is crumbling, or deteriorating, under our feet.’ Yep! My street would really afford some new asphalt and the LADWP can’t keep up with water pipes breaking up everywhere… Let’s face it, it was a failure, prices were discounted at the end because they couldn’t sell enough tickets, and plenty of free tickets were distributed to city officials. However the major and his friends don’t see a failure but just focus on the ‘perception that the festival generates’, the good image for the city…. What a hipster! Plus he is so full of himself he continues to pretend he is at the origin of the first music festival downtown LA! It’s not true at all, for three years, the La Weekly Detour Music Festival was well and alive, and I am not sure what happened to it.
Apparently, Philadelphia is doing a better job because the festival over there generated $10 million to the city, so why isn’t it working here? Oh may be because LA has about a million festivals already and people couldn’t care less for another one with a dubious line up? Not even Kanye West, Imagine Dragons, Kendrick Lamar, Iggy Azalea and John Mayer could sell this festival, and I totally understand why. In a just word, Jay Z would pay for this deficit, after all it was his festival and $170,000 is pocket money for him!
