Fatboy Slim & Eats Everything’s pop-up rave in Bristol shut down due to overcrowding
A free pop-up event in Bristol featuring Fatboy Slim and Eats Everything was shut down last night, Wednesday 12th October, due to overcrowding and concern for attendee safety.
Organised by roving rave crew Homebass, and designed to promote the artists’ new collaborative single, ‘Bristol to Brighton’, the party was set to take place under the Avon Bridge at Ashton Meadows, where West Country graffiti artists including the renowned Inkie had painted a new mural to promote the release, but police forced a change of location due to licensing issues.
Moving to the car park of legendary Bristol nightclub Lakota, proceedings were brought to an abrupt stop at around 8.10PM — just over one hour after the music began — at the request of venue management, who observed several people attempting to scale walls in a bid to jump the long queue to access the site.
BristolLive, which covered the event via a live blog yesterday evening, spoke to one 26-year-old, Eva, who reported having a panic attack due to nature of what was unfolding, and described the scenes as “dangerous” with attendees having “blocked the bouncers.”
Live tweeting yesterday evening, Bristol247’s Martin Booth reported at 8.23PM that “security has completely broken down at Lakota as dozens of people climb inside – causing Fatboy Slim and Eats Everything’s free party to be stopped.”
Responding to this, Lakota co-owner, Marti Burgess labelled Booth’s comments an “unfair description of what happened”, and went on to say: “Our security have been absolutely on it and we decided to shut as too many people were trying to get in and it became unsafe.”
In an Instagram story, Homebass wrote: “So many of you guys showed up the venue became overcrowded and we had to shut things down as it was getting unsafe and we aim to prioritise your safety so you can come and have a good experience.”
Earlier this year, DJ Mag’s Will Pritchard wrote an in-depth feature on what organisers are doing to stop crowd crushes at events following the Astroworld Festival tragedy in November 2021.
