AthFest Music and Arts Festival Reviews.

The bullhorn guys are part of a national ring of pseudo "preachers" - that have very little to do with actual christianity. It is a business:
The bullhorn guys are trained to incite upsetness and conflict with passerby's or people around them. Their buddies with the signs also have their cellphones at the ready for any kind of attack on their guy - at which point they sue you, and make money at that.
The police has not handhold on them, because it's public space and free speech. The organizers cannot do a thing about it either.

We've run across these guys at multiple big festivals around the country - same schpiel everywhere. As soon as you start discussing matters with them, they bombard you with very well rehearsed bible-phrases (or not - they could also just be throwing out stuff and adding some bible address to it). If you even so much as touch their arm, they cry "religous discrimination" and "assault" charges on you - and they have very well trained lawyers on their team to ensure they milk that for all it is worth.

Sorry you had to deal with them - we've had the same situation. The only remedy is to get your own bullhorn, and take turns with the other artists around to create a yelling match.

Posted by: Conni | 03/25/2017 at 12:07 PM

Wow frightening, can you and other artists band together in a class action suit for tortuous interference with your right too do business... or go back on the show, since they knew ahead of time and didn't warn you... I applaud your intestinal fortitude for not "B" slapping the snot out of them! An I don't mean "bible thumping them"

Posted by: Michelle Robison | 06/26/2014 at 11:49 PM

Medium: Drawing
Year you most recently exhibited at this Show: 2014
Your Estimated Sales at this Show: < $500
Number of Years You have Exhibited in this Show: 1st time
Attendance: (1 is poor, 5 is great) 1 (poor)
Location: 4
Facilities: 3
Ease of Participating: 4
Sales: 1 (poor)
Overall: 1 (poor)
Booth Fee vs. Your Sales Ratio: Poor
Estimated Attendance: 50,001+ people

Good Things about this Art Fair:
Nothing.

Bad Things about this Art Fair:

1. Inundated with extremely nasty men with obnoxiously loud bull horns. They spent 7 solid hours all 2 days exhorting us to repent our sins. They were well organized and managed to drown out a rock and roll concert which takes some doing. Their special targets were any females, who were universally called "sluts"' "whores" and "lesbians", while all attending males were categorized as "homos", "pedophiles", "masterbators" and deviants.
We were all informed that we were going to hell just for being there, that God Hated us one and all... Etc.

They had police protection and set up less than 30 feet from my tent. I was told that this is a common situation here. LOL, imagine a man with a filthy mouth standing about 20 feet in front of your booth with a large bullhorn cranking so loud it can drown out a nearby rock concert who screams insults for 7 hours straight (occasionally handing off to a colleague just as bad to rest, of course).

Imagine a large crowd composed of his myrmidons carrying professionally made signs plus a thousand drunks screaming back at him also standing in front of your booth for 7 hours (the show had extended night hours, going from 12noon to 10pm - the "Lamb of Jesus" (his own id, not mine) and his group arrived in the afternoon.

It was 2 of the hardest days of my life, and my wife (jewelry artist, she had a booth right next to mine) still has not recovered. I comprehend the problems with these people (a similar, essentially identical, group, using the same tactics, has a mission of showing up at the funerals of soldiers to jeer at them and call them "perverts and homos" as their grieving families put their sons and daughters in the ground...), they are well financed, legally savvy (the promoter told me that they received a 17 page legal document prior to the event), and ideologically committed.

There is little the promoters of the show or the city (they got their own copy of the document) can do. This just makes it more imperative for artists to avoid events targeted by this sort of thing.

The AthFest is a 501c3 (I am told) nonprofit, but we and our fellows are NOT. This hurt me financially as well as emotionally, and I would not wish this on anyone.

Advice to Other Artists Considering this Show: Stay away from Athens, Georgia.

Additional Commentary on this Show: Show is over run with cheap buy sell, spaces are precisely 9feet 11inches, lol.

Posted by: Stan Bruns | 06/25/2014 at 08:22 PM

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