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Email to the editor: Blame yourself, Joey Redner

 
Published March 12, 2014

Re: Last call, folks (tbt* cover story, March 11)

As an attendee of the Hunahpu Day beer festival at Cigar City Brewing, I was disturbed by the message conveyed in this article. I have been a witness to the incompetence that Joey Redner and co. have displayed over the last three years of the festival with regards to crowd control and event planning. It was disheartening to see that tbt* had accepted the Redner narrative of events this past Saturday.

Let me raise some questions about Redner's assertions:

1. He claims that 2,500 tickets were counterfeited, resulting in 6,000 people attending on Saturday. He supports this assertion by stating that all of the 6,000 Hunahpu taster glasses were given out. That assertion is suspect, because many attendees went back for two, three, four or even five glasses as the day dragged on. The extra 2,500 glasses were taken mostly by the original 3,500 attendees. Several hundred extra attendees may have entered, but I doubt it was 2,500. Redner should have the tickets from Saturday, so it shouldn't be too difficult to sort them and figure out the actual fake number.

2. Redner claims that the gate attendants were overwhelmed. Maybe this was because there were only two or three attendants checking in 3,500 eventgoers who were all told to show up at 11 a.m. Redner would have you believe this problem was caused by the counterfeit tickets. He didn't even have a reliable ticket scanning system in place. He had people relying on their own iPhones and spotty cellular coverage to scan people in. He took in over half a million dollars for the festival and couldn't invest in some actual ticket scanners and a WiFi network to support them?

Anthony Cobb, Tampa

Email tbteditors@tampabay.com.