Funny & negative review of the Amsterdam International Salsa Festival
Actually, I’d disagree strongly that in this one instance Miggie is, indeed, funny. He is at least unfair in many points and disingenuous in some. The organizer provided context on what happened - Miggie gave the wrong booking email at the door, his booking could not be located, and hence he decided to purchase another ticket at the door. Now, one might say it’s his word against Ivan’s but his own screenshots let you see that the transactions happened on different days, once to the ticket platform, once to Extremos - though he conveniently cropped the screenshots so that you cannot see the full date, that corroborates the promoter’s story. He didn’t just get randomly double charged as he suggests.
He said in the video his emails are being ignored, yet his own screenshots from the video show that he sent said emails on February 25th and he posted the video on the 26th - I mean, I wished we lived in a world where we could always expect immediate responses (though I don’t want to live in a world where I have to provide those immediate responses, as well), but what happened to “allow for a couple of business days”?
Now, the venue: he knew what he was booking and how far the distance to the venue is. How is that the event’s fault?
The app and locker policy have been announced this year well in advance. I understand that last year some people were upset about it because both have been announced after people booked and they kind of had no choice. This year, everyone knew what they were getting into. Yes, the lockers being perceived as not large enough or too expensive for their size may be an issue and if those double booking instances happened (some people reported of other problems with their lockers as well) - that IS a serious problem, I agree.
Performances until 1: not my favorite thing on earth, neither, but also kind of common practice is the other room was open.
Reframing a second salsa room as something that makes a festival worse is kinda silly. The rooms may have been named “mambo” and “romantica” but that doesn’t mean the largest room had nothing but mambo in it. Last year it was still very much a mix of different styles and videos from this year strongly suggest it’s been the same, just on average more up-tempo, whereas the romantica room had way more of a relaxed vibe - and not just Marc Anthony. Either way, Amsterdam passed on making this an SBK event by canceling a large bachata room and turning it into a second salsa room - something I truly, truly appreciate! And, last but not least, Miggie is a relatively new (in the grand scheme of things) salsa “influencer” from the US, who gained a huge following by creating funny salsa related pictures. He had a bad experience at a festival and chose to brand an organization, or more a specific promoter, who has been organizing large events for something like what - 15 to 20 years? - based on “trust me bro” level of evidence - I think the wording was “I heard he has a bad reputation and people are avoiding him” and then he went on with anecdotal evidence of someone who had an issue with a security guard in one of previous events. I think this is at least in very, very poor taste and my understanding of the US legal system is that this is not an accusation that should be just thrown around like that, had the organizer in question been also US-based. Essentially, these were exactly the points I’ve raised under his own video, minus the issue with the waiting period after the email being one day and the cropped screenshot as well as Ivan’s reply - because I haven’t noticed or known it yet - and I have mentioned several times that in some parts I understand why he might have felt ignored or that other points are personal preferences. The fact that he felt threatened enough by a comment that maybe 100 people will see and only 10 will read (it had a lot of words. Way too verbose for instagram!) to delete it tells me that he’s not doing that in good faith. (I’ll probably notice hundreds of spelling mistakes tomorrow as I wrote this on my phone, so my apologies in advance).
