This weekend’s PDX POP NOW music fest continues like gangbusters—in fact, at times it may be a bit TOO gangbustery. Check out this missive from PDX Pop Now’s Brent Bell…

I just wanted to let you know about a certain, I don’t know, let’s call it “situation” which arose on the opening night of this year’s PDX Pop Now! festival, which overall proved quite successful - perhaps a little too successful at a certain point in the evening.

A Portland fire marshal performed a walk-through at AudioCinema prior to the festival’s start and ruled that the main room - location of our inside stage - has a 600 person capacity. We realized about an hour prior to the evening’s final set - which kicked off with The Blow - that attendance would probably well exceed that number and issued a notice from the outside stage to festival-goers that a maximum of 600 people would be allowed inside for the remaining bands. Ultimately, the room hit capacity just before The Blow started and 250-300 people were left outside. We’re pretty sure a lot of folks showed up especially for The Blow, since enough people left after Khaela finished to allow most of the people stuck outdoors to come in.

I know, it’s a non-story. We hit capacity and held the door, per the marshal’s instructions, pure and simple. And most people accepted that they wouldn’t be let in graciously enough and many stayed and listened from outside; one gentleman was even heard to have said, “You filled up? Fucking awesome!”

Some people denied entrance, however, did become upset, accusing us of everything from poor planning to negligence to indifference and stating that we’re “bullshit” and that they’d make a larger issue of it, in the press and so forth. We truly regret being unable to let in everyone who made the effort to come down for the festival and take the issue to heart because, as we state in our mission statement, we are an organization “committed to being accessible.” We did, however, run straight into the limits of accessibiity.

We have a pretty specific set of requirements for a venue hosting our festival - two discrete stages, both of which must be completely open to people of all ages - and there are few places in town which can meet those requisites, trust us, especially for an all-volunteer nonprofit organization with limited resources at its disposal. Despite the capacity issue that emerged with The Blow (and which we believe will remain limited to The Blow; Khaela has an incredibly dedicated following), we feel fortunate to have lucked into an excellent new home for the festival this year at AudioCinema, which has been an amazing host.

Brent Bell
Communications
PDX Pop Now! 2007

MORAL: GET THERE EARLY, PEE-HOLES! There’s tons of more PDX POP NOW fun continuing today, so check out the schedule HERE, and get a great overview of the fest HERE!