Email
PrintHappy ComFest, stay home
At the end of this month, the Short North’s Goodale Park will host hours of free music, open-air imbibing and some of the best people watching this side of Mardi Gras.
ComFest is the coolest three days of the year in Columbus.
And I would really appreciate it if you don’t go.
The Community Festival was founded in 1972 as a tiny music festival, which then was shunned for years by the mainstream press—hippies weren’t exactly the Dispatch’s target readership back then—and suburbanites who probably thought the name made it sound like some sort of Commie love-in. (To be fair, that thought wasn’t all that far from the truth.)
But in the last few years particularly, the party with a purpose has swelled to attract an estimated 70,000 people, including soccer moms, their kids and hordes of other folk who have realized that free outdoor music is pretty freaking awesome.
Unfortunately, this increased appeal is threatening to ruin the festival as some attendees fail to understand the intended low-key vibe and appear to come just to get wasted. So please, if you’re thinking of trying out ComFest June 25, 26 and 27—don’t. (See “The trouble with ComFest” on page 58.)
The police presence to supervise the growing crowds already has changed the tenor of the gathering. While any sensible person can understand the need for police at a free event that welcomes all comers, irresponsible concertgoers threaten to force police to alter their customary hands-off approach to the party. In the past, as long as you didn’t punch, puke or puff directly in front of officers, they were content to let the fest party on.
Last year, it seemed as if police were paying more attention, which, like, totally harshed the ComFest buzz.
Full disclosure: While volunteering at a beer tent, I was pulled aside, physically, by a volunteer after an officer thought she saw me stealing beer tokens. I immediately turned over the tokens I’d absent-mindedly put in my pocket instead of the bin in the mad rush of volunteering to serve hundreds of drinkers. I had no intention of keeping them; they were for Labatt and I hate lagers. But there’s no way the watchful officer could have known that. Still, the experience left a rotten taste in my mouth—worse than the taste of Labatt—and my seven-year volunteer streak will end this year.
Patrolling the volunteers who make the festival possible seems like a misuse and mean-spirited waste of resources. But I understand that hawk-eyed officers are an unfortunate byproduct of attendees who, simply, don’t know how not to be drunken idiots in public.
Which is why I’d like to urge everyone who hasn’t been to ComFest to not go this year. Forget the fact you can get fantastic ribs or Indian, Greek and vegetarian food or Jeni’s ice cream or all the greasy fair fare your arteries can take. Never mind that as the music swells on Friday and Saturday nights, you’ll feel like you’re at a backyard party with hundreds of your closest friends. And please disregard the notion that putting down a blanket on the grass and soaking in all the atmosphere costs precisely nothing.
It’s not for you.
After last year’s festival, at which an 18-year-old man high on LSD fatally stabbed himself, ComFest organizers struck a deal with Columbus police to nearly double the number of special-duty officers working the event, although they did get them to agree to take a “nonconfrontational approach” to policing.
I hope this doesn’t have the same chilling effect of having too many parent chaperones at the middle school dance.
As special-duty assignments go, walking around a park full of happy people for three days doesn’t seem too taxing, and as long as police aren’t given overt reasons to interfere, I expect, as in years past, they won’t.
Anyone who has been going to ComFest for years understands how easy it is to avoid causing trouble. And if you’ve never been and don’t understand how it works, why try to go and learn now?
You’ll never know what you’re missing.
