Crib Notes

Cops barricade the door at the North Atlanta Trade Center during the Tiesto show Saturday, Oct 10

On the surface, the organizers of the Tiësto show last Saturday night were advertising this to be one of the biggest events of the year. So big in fact, that they secured one of the biggest indoor spaces in the metro area, the North Atlanta Trade Center.This is a venue that has hosted several large-scale festivals and fairs, it boasts its size at 120,000 square feet, and in fact, judging from the flurry of activity in Facebook and Twitter, the promoters were counting for the event to be sold out.

As expected, the crowd outside numbered in the several hundreds. I got to the NATC at around midnight, the venue’s parking lot was quickly running out of spaces and the two lines of people curled around the two sides of building.

The lone ticket processor working the door at the Tiesto show

Once I was able to walk up to the door, however, I quickly realized that the hold-up was not due to the massive amounts of people waiting to get in. I noticed the two lines where being funneled into the lobby of the building, where one staffer working on one laptop, painstakingly scanned each credit card to verify the ticket-holders right to entry.

People had been waiting for hours and were going restless. The crowd broke into chants of “What the fuck? What the fuck?” or “bullshit! bullshit!” and the most dangerous of them all, “rush the door.”

I approached a woman that held a clip-board in her hand, assuming she was working the event, to ask her if there was a line for those on the guest list. Two dudes with bulging biceps and glistening acne-covered faces and braces interrupted me, and asked the same woman the very same question. I suspect they didn’t hear the answer because they demanded to be let in immediately.

I went around and looked for another staffer who hadn’t been overwhelmed and I was quietly and quickly escorted into the front of the line. All I wanted to know was where to stand in line, next thing I know, I’m inside.

The rest of the people I was with, however, including my ride, were still outside.

Although the crowd inside was quite large, the space inside was no where near at capacity. Lines at the booze booths were short, as were the lines for the restrooms. To anyone inside, all was good, music was playing and $10 cocktails were flowing.

Back in the lobby, my guesstimate puts the ratio of security guards to staffers working the ticket table at 3 to 1. All signs told me that the organizers were quite aware of the massive scale of the event — they had a very efficient and lucrative parking strategy, charging $20 per car — and yet the lobby had turned into a air-tight bottle neck of extremely frustrated ravers.

People kept banging on the glass doors. Someone threw a glass bottle.

About 20 minutes later, as I stood waiting for my friends to make it through the door, I get a text message from one of them: “Dude 15 cop cars just pulled up! no joke.” In fact, 35 cops arrived on the scene. Officers from the Gwinnett County Sheriff’s Office were working the event as off-duty security, and once they decided the crowd was bordering on riot mode, they called the on-duty badges.

Back inside, the organizers decided to try and speed up the process, opening a second check point and simply asking for the printed receipt and an ID.

It didn’t help. When it was evident that the police, with riot gear in tow, were shutting it down, the security personnel and those working the door collectively threw their hands in the air, letting anyone still in the lobby through.

Sure enough, the cops formed a barricade in front of the door, telling everyone else to go to their cars. It was now 1:15 am. Signs all over inside building advised the crowd that alcohol would be cut off at 2:00 am by order of Gwinnett County ordinance.

At this point, the woman working the credit card scanner packed up, got up, and left, as did the other staffers. Only a handful security guards remained as the cops were turning people away from the door.

It's time to bounce: The organizers pack up and go

Since my friends were caught up in the mess outside, I had to leave. On my way out, the security guard warned that I would not be let back in, a fact that was confirmed by one the cops.

“Are you planning on letting one back in?” I asked. “No,” he said.

Music was still thump-dacca-thump-dacca-thumping inside, and from the sound of the crowd, Tiësto had just taken the stage.

My one and only question is, if there was enough foresight to choose the NATC as the venue, hire more than two dozen security personnel, including officers from the Gwinnett County Sheriff’s office, setup an efficient and very lucrative parking scheme, why only have one laptop to scan the bar codes?

An official press release by Devin Walkley of Liquified, one of the organizers of the events, expresses apologies to those “inconvenienced, especially to the few people that had bought tickets and could not get into the Tiesto event.” His explanation as to why the door wasn’t moving any faster:

“Once production was secured, we opened the doors at 10:30PM and by 12:30 we had processed over 4000 people who were inside to experience a truly amazing show.”

But as one commenter in the Liquified Events Facebook group points out:

“Basic math, you say doors opened at 10:30 and by 12:30 4000 people inside, hmmm. 4000/120 min = 33.3 people let in per min, so 2 sec per person to get them in, pat them down and scan everything. No, that did not happen, not even close. At 3 sec per person, you could only get in 2,400 people in 2 hours. So please, educate me…”

All signs pointed to this indeed being one of the biggest shows of the year, and for the several hundred that did manage to get in, it probably was, but to those that were shut out, it sure feels like a raver high on ecstasy puked on their shoes.

(Photos by Alejandro A. Leal)

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Tags: Devin Walkley, Liquified, north atlanta trade center, tiesto.