I couldn't get that link to work and had to use the search feature to pull up the article... so here it is...
New Year's Eve Party at Armory Canceled
Police Concerns About Drugs, DJ's Fear of Terrorism Prompt Firm to Move Rave
_____Special Report_____
By David A. Fahrenthold
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 7, 2001; Page B03
Ultraworld Productions, a hip party-promotion company, had everything set for a New Year's Eve rave at the D.C. Armory. Local and international DJs had been booked, and there was a huge venue that could hold more than 7,500 people paying $35 to $40 a head.
This week, it all crashed.
First, the head of a D.C. police anti-drug squad told armory managers that the event could be a repeat of a similar gathering last month, at which 20 people were arrested and 300 pills of the drug Ecstasy confiscated. He warned of overdoses and a strain on police manpower.
Then, while promoters and the armory were weighing those concerns, the rave's headlining DJ backed out -- citing a fear of terrorism.
"He decided that he was afraid to come to the nation's capital," Ultraworld President Lonnie Fisher said yesterday. Fisher said that he was notified Wednesday that Armand Van Helden, a New York-based DJ who was to get top billing at the all-night armory party, wasn't coming.
Fisher said the party, which he won't call a rave lest that connote drug use, will now be moved to a nightclub in Southeast Washington. The armory is scrambling for another event on New Year's Eve.
"Having lost the headline performer," Fisher said, "we took it as a sign that maybe it was just best to not pursue the event at the armory at this time."
Fisher said Van Helden apparently felt that his celebrity status, plus the fact that he appears dressed as a Muslim on the cover of his latest album, could put him in danger.
Until Wednesday, the biggest concern for the party's organizers was Inspector Hilton Burton, head of the D.C. police major narcotics section. In a meeting Tuesday with the D.C. Sports and Entertainment Commission, which handles scheduling for the armory, Burton described the drugs his undercover officers found at an Ultraworld party at the armory Nov. 24.
The major narcotics unit normally does buy-and-bust operations on some of the District's meaner streets. For the Nov. 24 event, it scoured the department for officers who could pass for teenagers and sent about 10 of them into a crowd of thousands -- trying to blend in with the ravers by waving glow sticks and sporting dyed hair or glittery makeup.
"It [was] a buyer's market in there," Burton said. About 40 people made sales to undercover officers. Although about half those sales turned out to be aspirin, Sudafed or other legal drugs, the officers confiscated everything from Ecstasy and marijuana to crystal methamphetamine and PCP.
"Eventually, somebody's going to O.D.," Burton said in an interview. "It's a recipe for danger."
Bobby Goldwater, president and executive director of the Sports and Entertainment Commission, said police concerns about drugs and manpower had been mostly settled by yesterday. He said the commission was ready to go ahead with the party until Ultraworld called to say Van Helden had canceled.
Fisher said the promoters didn't think they could fill the armory without Van Helden. Now, they are planning to have the event at the Edge nightclub on L Street SE, which holds about 1,000 people.
"It's simply now moved from massive to intimate," says a Web site promoting the event. Ticket prices will be the same.
Goldwater said the commission is looking for another event for New Year's Eve at the armory, but that it might be too late to find and promote something else.
© 2001 The Washington Post Company
