The poster advertising ‘Road to Ultra’ didn’t work on me, so I wasn’t at the West Kowloon music festival last weekend. As well as the unappealing advertising, it was one of those peculiar events where you get DJs instead of actual bands. The hype-prone Standard regaled readers with descriptions of drunkenness, exotic foreigners and ‘marijuana in the air’ – but I doubt it was that good.
Although sad, it is not really shocking that, amid the heat and revelry, one person died and several were hospitalized. But what better excuse for some major mouth-frothing about the West Kowloon Cultural District Authority, which controls the site? (Having also apparently dropped some bad Ecstasy, the government chooses this moment to appoint the hapless Henry Tang as the new figurehead for the West Kowloon Cultural Hub-Zone. Presumably the idea is that he has no connection or familiarity with the arts, so there is no conflict of interest – indeed, just no interest.)
Meanwhile, behind the scenes, Hong Kong bureaucracy feels a massive, obsessive, permanent over-reaction coming on…
We can safely predict that from now until eternity, the West Kowloon Themed Cultural Concept District will be The Place Where People Do Drugs and Die Unless We Stop Them. Every event will be subject to the most frantic, extreme and absurd security measures.
Little old ladies attending Chinese opera, already freaked out by the women’s private parts problem, will have their handbags probed mercilessly. Tourists planning to check out the National Palace Museum of Stuff the Kuomintang Left Behind will have their pockets rummaged for hours. As for open-air concerts aimed at young foreign-influenced degenerates – music fans will stand in line for hours as guards sniff out and confiscate aspirin, jelly beans, asthma inhalers, yellow umbrellas and all other suspect dangerous paraphernalia.
I make a lot of wild forecasts, but this is guaranteed.
I suspect the music was of the kind that you would need to be on drugs to tolerate!
On the TVB news last night Carrie Lam said that she could think of no-one better to be Chairman of WKCDA than Henry. How very sadly true that is. Was Ron Arculli busy?
I would also like to make a forecast, maybe not so wild. When the West Kowloon Whatever Authority becomes operational it will produce results that show it makes a big whacking loss. I would have thought events like, ‘Road to Ultra’ would be the only hope of somehow mopping up some of the red ink.
Quick question should events like ‘Road to Ultra’ be held at the Central Harbour Event Space which, with its non-spinning wheel, has a touch of the tumbleweed about it ?
“We were carrying a bottle of water but were asked to empty it before we passed the first round of security.”
“They had rules in place so we couldn’t bring outside food and bottles of water ourselves even though everyone knows they will need it. Then it was $50 for the small bottle of water, probably about [a] 330ml bottle,” attendee Edwin Lai told HKFP.
Sooo let’s all just solely blame drugs — not crass commercialism coupled with poor weather planning — for the deaths by heat stroke.
For a brief moment I felt slightly sorry for that chinless wonder, Henry: he’s been giving this steaming, fresh turd, Carrie’s enforced ‘irrelevant museum no one wanted’ stale turd, and bag of vaginas to deal with.
And he’s too dim to even notice that being given a visibly flaming bag of shit to curate is probably a bad thing:
“I am deeply grateful to the chief executive for appointing me as chairman of the board of WKCDA. … As WKCD has progressed from the planning phase to the operation phase, I eagerly look forward to working closely with the fellow members of the board to achieve the vision and mission of WKCD.”
What an easy mark. Perhaps we should sell him the Hong Kong-Macau-Zhuhai Bridge.
I hear Carrie Lam wanted Allan Zeman but he had to refuse as he had already committed himself to Ocean Park’s Haunted House as a live exhibit.
Would have been so much more successful had it been billed “Road and Belt to Ultra”
Carrie hiring Henry is simply a stab at 689.
@Joe Blow
Frankly, I’d say the best way to have a stab at 689 with WKCD would have been to have hired him for the job. It’s an inevitable, pre-determined, full-blown fiasco, and will be a lasting legacy of fail to whichever unfortunate is in charge when it finally kicks off and is found to be a uniquely awful waste of cash and space.