‘No One is Eating So Therefore No One’s Pooping’ – Leaked Fyre Festival Emails Show Depth of Planning Problems
Five weeks after the Fyre Festival was canceled, more details are coming out that show how ill-prepared its organizers were. A series of leaked emails reveal that they hadn't particularly given much thought to bathroom or housing facilities until it was too late.
This morning, Mic published excerpts from several e-mail chains after confirming their authenticity. On April 3, an unnamed mid-level staffer wrote to the executives that it would cost roughly $400,000 to ship enough bathroom and shower trailers to accommodate 2,500 people -- or 152 shower heads and 125 bathroom stalls. Conall Arora, the president of Fyre Media, suggested getting 75 portapotties to save money. ""If we cut it in half, we would just have double the line wait?" he wrote.
Executive producer Lyly Villanueva was against the switch due to the potential backlash of portapotties being the only facilities for five days at what was promised to be a "luxury" destination. Still, it appears they went with the portapotties, as one of the lawsuits filed stated that they were situated every 200 yards, with only three showers.
This occurred shortly after the Starr Catering Group pulled out of the festival, causing one person to joke that it didn't matter if there were bathrooms. "No one is eating so therefore no one's pooping," he/she wrote.
A week before the festival, was supposed to have started, Marc Weinstein, a consultant, sent out an e-mail saying that there still wasn't enough housing for everybody. Without lodging for nearly 600 people, including "social media influencers, investors, artists, vendors and staff," Weinstein proposed firing 130 people and renting a cruise ship to accommodate 225 people.
He also recommended contacting the 50 customers who had paid for the lowest package and bumping them from the first weekend to the second, offering them an upgrade to a luxury villa. But Weinstein soon realized that those villas didn't exist. And even the small supply of housing they did have lacked necessities like toilet paper and soap.
These emails help back up the revelations Chloe Gordon, who spent a week on-site as a talent producer, made shortly after the festival was canceled. "Nothing had been done," she wrote. "Festival vendors weren’t in place, no stage had been rented, transportation had not been arranged. ... This whole thing was playing out as a hilarious disaster."
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