Bonnaroo NorthEast cancelled (big surprise)

this little Long Island town is getting the worst press ever!
morons, absolute morons.


Second Calverton Rock Concert Canceled
Two-day event to have featured Dylan, the Dead and Tom Petty

newsday

Calverton's long, strange trip is over. Days after a two-day rock concert there was scrapped, promoters of an even bigger music festival that would have featured The Dead and Bob Dylan on the same spot in August announced they would call off their own event.

The organizers of Bonnaroo NE, a three-day music and camping festival that was to also feature performances by Dave Matthews and Tom Petty, said in a statement yesterday that because of recent events, "it is impossible for us to proceed and we must cancel Bonnaroo NE. We have determined that it would be irresponsible to the artists, to the festivalgoers, to citizens in the community and to ourselves to move ahead with our plans given the circumstances that now exist."

The news comes after promoters for the Field Day Festival, scheduled for last weekend, were forced to scale back their event to a one-day concert and relocate it to Giants Stadium after failing to get necessary county and town permits to hold the concert in Calverton. The permits were denied because the town could not guarantee a large-enough police presence. Fans from as far away as Australia had bought tickets to that show, which was headlined by Radiohead and the Beastie Boys.

Bonnaroo's promoters said all tickets would be automatically refunded, and the concert will not be rescheduled this year. The Bonnaroo Music Festival 2003, a concert in Tennessee set for this weekend and organized by the same people, will not be affected by the decision.

"I'm so depressed about this," said Jill Morrison, local music director for WUSB-FM in Stony Brook, who had been working on booking the "Long Island Locals Village" stage for Bonnaroo NE. "It's just so hard. I couldn't do anything to help. We were going to try to lobby the Suffolk County Legislature, but I don't know if that would have done any good."

The Bonnaroo NE festival had expected more than 75,000 people, and Field Day organizers had planned to draw a crowd of around 50,000. Both events had drawn criticism from residents and environmental groups, who feared the crowds would clog local roads and endanger public safety.

Both concerts would have taken place at Calverton Enterprise Park, a 2,900-acre parcel given to Riverhead by the U.S. Navy in the 1990s to spur economic development. Town officials had hoped the concerts would raise the property's profile and attract new buyers.

Field Day promoter Andrew Dreskin said yesterday that the failures mean the town is effectively out of the concert business. "Riverhead and Suffolk County had two tremendous opportunities in front of them, and both have been squandered," he said. "No one will ever touch this site again."

But Riverhead Town Supervisor Robert Kozakiewicz said he didn't believe the cancellations would stop buyers with long-term plans from investing in the site. While he said he respected the Bonnaroo promoters' decision, "I'm saddened by the fact that they chose not to proceed."

Richard Amper, executive director of the Long Island Pine Barrens Society, praised the decision yesterday. His group had feared the large crowds at both concerts might damage the pine barrens, protected land that surrounds the concert site. "This was a sensible and commendable decision," he said.

Staff writer Glenn Gamboa contributed to this story.