Missouri Town Forces The Gathering Of The Juggalos To Find A New Location
By Chuck Sudo in Arts & Entertainment on Feb 13, 2014 10:00PM
Residents of the Missouri town that was set to host the 2014 Gathering of the Juggalos have gone collectively NIMBY about having thousands of tattooed, pierced, barely clothed painted faces overrunning their town, drinking Faygo, wrestling and bonding for a week and now the festival’s organizers are looking for a new location.
The backlash started almost immediately after Psychopathic Records announced they would host the festival this August in Kaiser, Mo. with the promise to the Juggalos that they would have better access to Wal-Marts, chain restaurants, convenience stores and other amenities. Or, in Juggalo-speak, “livin’ tha muthafukkin’ dream. Woot woot!”
Tickets for the Gathering went on sale last week and lodging accommodations soon sold out but that didn’t stop one Missouri state representative from hoisting the “anywhere but Kaiser” banner high and proud. Republican Rocky Miller said that while he couldn’t stop the Gathering from happening he would make it hard for it to take place.
"I got a lot of contacts on the latest music festival coming to the area," Miller said in a report to his constituents on Feb. 7. "After some research, I discovered this festival is headlined by the Insane Clown Posse (ICP). The followers of the ICP are known as the Juggalos."
Miller apparently spends his free time in a cave as he had little knowledge of the Gathering.
As those of us who do keep up on current events know by now, the FBI classified Juggalos as a gang in its 2011 gang threat assessment. Insane Clown Posse, with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union, filed a lawsuit against the FBI over that gang classification.
Miller continued:
"This may not sound like much, but anyone previously putting on an outdoor festival will tell you that a lot of state agencies need to be satisfied. We are also researching to see if the music promoters can be bonded to verify that all of our law enforcement and other tax paid services will be paid for," he said in the report. "This festival has a bad reputation from what I can obtain from the internet, but I am hopeful that if they can follow our local and state laws, everyone attending can have a good, safe time and all other visitors and locals will be protected."
Miller’s channeling of William Shatner in The Intruder had the desired effect of playing with the emotions of residents who didn’t want the festival in their town. Psychopathic Records released a statement on its website explaining they would not be heading to Kaiser. (Emphasis ours.)
(A)fter we signed the contract and announced the location of the Gathering, some of the people that lived in the surrounding community began to raise hell. Not all of them, mind you, but enough to bring a lot of heat to the owners of the campground. Not only that, they also experienced a media blitz and their phones would not stop ringing. This was no doubt amplified because of the recent lawsuit filed against the FBI by Psychopathic Records and the ACLU for wrongly accusing the Juggalos of being a gang, as well as the reports of last year’s Gathering losing money. Some people in the community where the Gathering was to be held must have believed the nonsense because they kept saying a “gang” was coming to their town and we heard reports that some people were starting to arm themselves. Unbelievable!Because of this, the owners of Harlequin Park were getting non-stop calls from angry neighbors and some even stopped by their property threatening to boycott their campground and even started a petition against them. It was just too much of an onslaught of negative energy coming at them for them to handle. They endured the unendurable and suffered the insufferable to the point that they couldn’t take it anymore and decided to pull the plug. We want to add that we at Psychopathic Records hold no resentment toward the people of the campground. They really tried to make this work but with threat of their business suffering long after we have left, it’s understandable why they chose to do what they did. There was no way to prepare for how much attention this was going to get and how negatively some people were going to react to the Gathering coming to their town.
CryBaby Campground (where the Gathering was to be held) has experience with unruly crowds, having previously hosted a couple of Hell’s Angels rallies but it appears the only crybabies here are Miller and the neighbors who thought arming themselves against a group of people best known for spraying cheap pop on each other was a rational decision. Actually, we shouldn’t be surprised. This is a state where another legislator is proposing bringing back firing squads as a capital punishment option and came this close to electing Todd “Legitimate Rape” Akin to the United States Senate.
Does the Gathering have a bad reputation? Sure, with much of it well-earned. For the most part, they keep to themselves during the Gatherings and only tend to hurt themselves. Miller County (Mo.) Sheriff Bill Abbott had the best perspective of Juggalo Nation coming to his neck of the woods when he said, "If you're looking for trouble, you'll find trouble. We don't want no trouble here whatsoever, and I'm sure they don't, either.”
Thanks to a handful of xenophobes no one will find out for certain.