Sobering beer festival

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32705, 7 September 1971, Page 2

Sobering beer festival

(N.Z. Press Association) HASTINGS, Sept. 6. A Munich-style beer festival held in Hastings on Saturday night proved a sobering affair for the organisers. Although only 1500 tickets were printed and sold, gatecrashers swelled the number of people at the festival to nearly 2000. But this Morning the chairman of the Te Mata Kindergarten Establishment Committee, which organised the festival, described it as a success. Mr S. Jewel said his committee expected to make a profit of $2OOO. The festival was held beneath the new grandstand at the Tomoana show grounds. Senior-Sergeant I. F. Croxford, of the Hastings police, today criticised the festival, and said the facilities were inadequate for the crowd. The festival began with singing and items from the Royal New Zealand Army Band, but as the crowd increased, the singing stopped. People clambered on to tables and chairs to get a better view of the proceedings, and waitresses who had been filling empty glasses and jugs found they could not get through the crowd. Doors leading Into the hall had to be left unlocked for fire escape reasons, and before long the security men on duty found they could noi cope with the number oi gate-crashers. Onions which had been put on tables in the hall were used as missiles by some people, and within a short time, pieces of chicken were being thrown at random over the heads of the crowd. A large flag, one of 12 lent to the organisers by the German Embassy in Wellington, was hauled down near the roof beams by a group of men who used tables and chairs to form a pyramid to reach the flag.

A 17-year-old girl fell about 15ft on to a table from a balcony above the floor to the hall and was admitted to the Hastings Memorial Hospital with concussion. The girl. Miss Virginia Harris, was standing watching the activities below with her boyfriend, who was apparently struck by another youth. As her boy-friend fell back he cannoned into Miss Harris, i who fell over the railing. By 11,10 p.m. the 1000 gal- , lons of beer provided by the . festival organisers had been . drunk, although wine and > sherry were still available. I Mr Jewell said that the

crowd ate 5001 b of frankfurters, 3000 bread rolls, 3001 b of cheese and 8001 b of chicken. Any food not eaten was trampled underfoot by the milling beer-drinkers.

A group of 12 policemen arrived at the festival about 11 p.m., but no arrests were made.

Hundreds of chairs had to be washed, and about 20 chairs and tables were broken. Five dozen glass beer jugs, which will cost about $1 each to replace, were stolen, and $3O was stolen from a booth selling cigarettes.