City Threatens To Shut Down Upcoming Sunset Junction Festival Over Last Year's Bill

Photo from Sunset Junction 2010 by samleonlive via LAist Featured Photos Flickr Pool.

Your chance to see Hanson take the stage at the Sunset Junction Festival could be hanging in the balance if organizers don't cough up fees from last year's festival, according to the Los Angeles Times.

This year's festival, headlined by Butthole Surfers, Bobby Womack and, yes, your favorite former tween sensation is scheduled for August 27 and 28.

Organizers are already selling tickets. But the city is withholding permits that would allow the show to go on, until the festival pays back $267,000 in fees for police staffing and police closures from last year's event.

The organizers complain that they're being charged steeper rates than other festivals like Venice's Abbot Kinney Festival and the Eagle Rock Music Festival.

This isn't the first time that the city and Sunset Junction Festival have clashed. Last year, Eric Garcetti was dismayed that employees of businesses inside the festival had trouble getting in to work. Community members complained last year that the festival - and tardy street-sweepers - left their neighborhood a mess.

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By Emma G. Gallegos in Arts & Events on August 17, 2011 2:40 PM

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BeanSpeaks

Any complaints from the organizers should be ignored completely. According to the linked article from last year, they made a special deal with the city to pay fees within 10 days of the event in order to avoid the normal process of paying everything up front. So they were already getting preferential treatment. The fact they've been allowed to go this long without paying, and that there's even a *chance* that the show might go on as scheduled, shows how preferential their treatment has been, and they have the audacity to complain that they're getting treated unfairly? Cry me a river.