Fyre Fest in the Bahamas fizzles into a giant fiasco
In this day and age, the young and beautiful live and die on social media.
In the case of the ill-fated Fyre Festival — a multiday music, art and culture party that promised “an invitation to let loose and unplug with the likeminded” on the Bahamian island of Exuma — it’s been a sudden and ugly death, chronicled in real-time on YouTube and filtered through Facebook.
Organizers canceled the event at the last minute after poor planning, disorganization and lack of accommodations. Most of the A-list acts had pulled out of the festival days before, citing a lack of payment.
It was supposed to be a sun-soaked experience filled with gourmet food and models. Tickets ranged from $500 to $12,000.
But by Saturday morning, the partygoers had decamped, many of them to hotels in Miami in hopes of salvaging a weekend. People decried the festival accommodations as being like a “disaster tent city” and a “refugee camp.”
In a statement posted on the Fyre Festival website Saturday, co-organizer Billy McFarland said festivalgoers will be refunded in full. “We will be working on refunds over the next few days and will be in touch directly with guests with more details. Also, all guests from this year will have free VIP passes to next year’s festival,” he wrote.
The hype for Fyre Festival began months ago, marketed with slick videos on social media.
“I saw it on Instagram and booked it before the lineup was announced,” said Mitch Purgason, 25, a bespoke menswear designer in Charlotte, N.C.
The Instagram ads looked especially “ridiculous” — parlance for amazing — what with models like Gigi Hadid and rapper Ja Rule. Blink-182 was supposed to perform. Photos of the impossibly blue water and the sandy beach looked incredible.
And the veritable icing on the cake: wild, docile pigs lived on the beach and swam in the warm water, perfect props for a killer Instagram selfie.
Although the festival on the island chain east of Florida appeared to cater to the millennial trust fund crowd, it was people like Purgason and 29-year-old Jake Strang of Pittsburgh who purchased early tickets — young professionals who wanted to spend a fun weekend in the tropics.
Like Purgason, Strang paid $500 for a flight to the island from Miami, lodging and food. Strang and seven of his friends reserved a “lodge” for eight, with four king beds and a seating area in the middle.
“Everything made it look amazing,” said Strang.
“When we arrived (on Thursday), it essentially looked like a construction site. It looked like they were trying to sell lots for homes,” he said.
Many festivalgoers were told by the promoter to find a tent. But the tents had holes that had obviously allowed rain to come in because the beds were wet, Strang said.
A few lucky patrons had been relocated to resorts. Most were left to find beds in the tents.
By daybreak, people had already started to line up and complain, and buses began taking people to the airport. It was official: the festival was canceled. Word got out via social media that organizers issued a statement citing “circumstances out of our control” for their inability to prepare the “physical infrastructure” for the event in the largely undeveloped Exuma.