A popular New York music festival is drawing comparisons to the famous concert disasters Astroworld and Fyre Festival, as it degenerated into a potentially deadly situation, with the city vowing to take action after a weekend plagued by overbooking, last-minute cancellations, and logistical failures. Although the Electric Zoo festival, or EZoo for short, is in its 14th year, one concertgoer told Fortune they were terrified at this iteration, while Mayor Eric Adams was more blunt. “The organizers wanted to turn our city into a zoo,” he said on Tuesday. “We will be dealing with them in the next few days based on their behaviors and actions.”
For a decade and a half, the electronic dance music (EDM) festival has typically attracted over 100,000 ravers from the Gen Z and millennial crowd of twenty- and thirtysomethings to Randall's Island over the Labor Day weekend. Many spend thousands on tickets, travel, accommodations, outfits, food, drinks, and drugs just to hear heavy bass thunder and neon lasers cut through the late summer air. This year's lineup promised major names from the genre in Deadmau5, Steve Aoki, Major Lazer, and Marshmello, but it was plagued by disasters before it even began.
