Hey thanks, Music Midtown. Your packed entertainment schedule, sell-outs and tens of thousand of fans left the meadow of Piedmont Park a dirty brown mess just in time for Atlanta Pride.
The two-day music festival, just three weeks before tens of thousands of people again crowd the park for Pride on Oct. 13-14, left behind visible damage to the meadow area. That’s the same place where Pride constructs the larger of its two stages and where AIDS Walk Atlanta also puts its stage, AIDS Quilt and other booths for its large-scale event a week later on Oct. 21.
A Midtown resident shot several photos before and after the Sept. 21-22 event, which Midtown Patch published in its takedown of the damage.
As happened a year ago, the area was trampled upon by tens of thousands of fans who attended the two-day festival on Sept. 21-22. After the September 2011 one-day Music Midtown, the portion of the meadow near where the stage was located had to be restored and fenced off until mid-spring.
The meadow was fairly green two weeks ago as can be seen by these pictures that were taken on Sept. 16. But the post-Music Midtown shots, snapped four days after the festival, reveal lots more brown grass mixed in with the green.
Music Midtown apparently installed some new turf protection to help minimize impact on the park’s grass. But foot traffic seemed to take its toll.
The caretakers of the public park, the Piedmont Park Conservancy, haven’t minded the turf getting trampled and damaged if it happens during a concert that raises big bucks for them. But large-scale festivals including Pride have a troubled relationship with the group and the city, which banned them from parks in 2008. That move nearly devastated Pride, which was forced to move to the Atlanta Civic Center.
Happy Pride (on the dead grass)! P.S. Don’t smoke and leave your porn at home.
Photo via Midtown Patch
