Last weekend’s greatly-hyped Shelter Island Fire Festival turned into a fiasco when several thousand people showed up thinking they were going to be seeing their favorite pop stars perform amid a scene of glamor and luxury, and instead wound up standing around in an empty field watching a fairly small bonfire—a camp fire, if truth be told—tended by an irascible old man.
Police and emergency officials were brought in to deal with the situation, as many festival-goers had anticipated sleeping in tents provided by the festival’s organizers and, in the end, the festival appeared to have no organizers.
The old man tending the festival’s literal fire disappeared before he could be questioned.
“These kids said they paid over 1,000 bucks to be here,” Hamptons Police spokesman Larry Hirsch said. “They were told to make checks payable to OMM Enterprises. We’re not quite sure yet who was behind this, but we have our suspicions.”
In the end, all festival-goers were evacuated without mishap.
