http://www.residentadvisor.net/news.aspx?id=9643

the fucked up thing is that i got to penn plaza really early (11pm), waited on line for 2 hours because the RFID system crashed (so much for their “focus on innovation and technology”). meanwhile i’m seeing people cutting us in line and paying cash to get in before willcall guests! so i finally get in and it’s half empty. i was later told they weren’t letting people in but the fucked up thing is that they told people they party was CANCELED, not moved.

paul ritch, and the 3 hour tag team between marco carola and paco osuna was seriously some of the best techno i’ve ever heard in my life. i had friends who had weekend passes and didn’t get in, and no refunds were issued. i can’t believe minimoo has the nerve to say “the more people request refunds, the less likely we’ll throw another event next year”! playing the victim and expecting us not to be pissed or feel cheated, and pocketing the cash.

one of my friends played and said that hardly any of the artists even got paid or got cabs/drinks. TOTALLY fucked up and unprofessional…

ugh i could go on, but my sympathy goes out to the out-of-towners and artists who will never come back to nyc bc of this debacle!

Minitek Blog has been updated:

http://minitekfestival.com/blog/

apologies owed…
September 16th, 2008 by Jenny

dear all,

as we’ve expected, there are many enraged, disappointed and upset people out there that gave minitek’s first edition their support.

obviously we want to apologize for all the mishaps that have taken place over the weekend and we know well that we can offer little to make up for the bad experiences. we can’t blame you for directing all your anger towards us, as we are the official representatives of the festival, however, to save at least a little bit of face, we would like to set a few things clear.

1) unlike the comments that have been posted, we DID NOT book a night venue that wouldn’t hold the amount of people we expected. instead we worked with a venue that had misrepresented their certificate of occupancy (the official document that restricts the amount of people the venue can legally hold). there was no reason to believe that the 38.000sf venue couldn’t hold 2500 people at the very least. once the police showed up, the manager of the venue was forced to show the “real” certificate of occupancy and as it turned out, the venue didn’t even have one! the one that was eventually shown to the police was from 1963 and claimed an occupancy of only 208 people, but it was long void as the venue had changed their use a few times since the permit was issued more than 40 years ago.

2) when we moved to rebel that same night, they had clear instructions to let in everyone with a wristband for free. most people i spoke to didn’t have an issue, but we did read in some posts that people had to pay again, which we deeply regret. at least we were able to salvage paul ritch’s, paco osuna’s, elon’s, memek’s and marco carola’s set, and we hope that we receive at least a little bit of credit for having been able to move to a backup venue within 10 minutes of the news that we were going to get shut down at 3:30am, most festivals would have just ended there.

3) minitek night was supposed to take place at the penn plaza both nights. the police had notified us that they would accept a maximum of 75 people in the space the second night, so we were obviously forced to work on a contingency plan. as you can imagine, there are hardly any venues in new york city that are large enough to hold several thousand people and second, available on a saturday night. we had to resort to splitting the night into two in order to make sure we could hold as many people as possible and honour the performances of the artists.

4) as for announcing the night venue change on saturday night, we had posted a sign outside the penn plaza but in a deliberate attempt to sabotage the festival, the sign was removed, possibly by someone affiliated with friday’s venue. rumour had it that webster hall was saturday night’s venue but it was in fact studio b and club europa, not webster hall.

4) regarding the opening of the second stage on saturday in coney island, it was a delay on the side of the sound production company, and as much as we pressured them, they weren’t able to open the stage until 7pm.

5) we had requested (and received a verbal ok) for a sound permit until midnight on the saturday and one until 11pm on the sunday. on saturday afternoon, however, we were informed by the authorities that the permit was only until 10pm for the saturday, so we had to cut the set times short. the notice for sunday came on sunday.

6) the RFID wristbands didn’t work out because they required internet access in order to be charged and loaded. we had ordered (and paid) internet connection at the penn plaza over 4 weeks ago and for the system to work, we would have needed 28 separate IP addresses, one for each reader. we eventually received only 5 IP addresses (without prior notice), and throughout the night, the internet dropped entirely, rendering the whole system useless. we will reimburse money loaded onto the wristbands at the beginning of the night, please get in touch with us on info@minitekfestival.com and keep the wristbands.

as for the organisation on our end, we admit that there were many mistakes and misjudgements made. had it been only for those though, we would have still been able to pull off the event without major glitches, albeit not as planned but certainly far from the disasters that eventually happened. we take the blame for those but we do hope that you understand that most chaos was caused by the night venue’s misrepresentation, which – straightout- f***ed us over, collected ten thousands of dollars from us and left us stranded. you can imagine the value lost from 1500 people that couldn’t enter that night, those who couldn’t enter the next night, let alone the big hit on our reputation.

all in all, as much as many of you had a terrible experience, you can’t even possibly imagine how we feel about the festival. apart from all personal money invested and lost, we also dedicated months and months of our time and all our energy and passion to making something happen that new york had never seen before. we had a vision and seeing the aftermath of everything almost kills our spirit.

we obviously understand that those of you who didn’t make it in on friday or saturday night are requesting refunds. but we also know that the more people are requesting refunds, the less likely it will be that we’ll be able to do minitek again in 2009, having learned from our experiences this year. we would really love to receive a second chance, to prove that we can in fact pull it off. refund policies are going to be published on wednesday.

a million things went wrong this year but the turnout proves that at least the idea of minitek wasn’t totally crazy and unless we’re fully deluded we did see and spoke to thousands of happy faces over the weekend, dancing, enjoying the music and thanking us for making minitek happen in the first place. rich’s and francois k’s closing sets surely were epic. and while the angry festival-goers are voicing their opinions on blogs and message boards, the satisfied attendees are silent.

so, a big apology to all of you who felt mistreated this weekend, we certainly had no intentions of delivering less than we promised. and a big “thank you” to those who still support us and who believe that with great lessons learned, we’ll be able to give new york the festival it deserves next year!

love,

jenny, daniele & the whole minitek team

please feel free to send us evil emails to info@minitekfestival.com and in case there are people out there who would like to drop us a line of support, please do so. in times like today, a few kind words surely go a long way…