HARD Events

Ive been attending electronic music events since the late 90s. Hard events is just about the worst major event organization I have come across. And that says a lot with my experience let me tell you.
For starters their events have long lists of ridiculously random banned items; clothing items, paraphernalia, and vague size restrictions on things like backpacks, hand bags, purses etc. You know, things that normal people bring to concerts. There are no measurements at the entrance, security just makes a judgement call and either you throw away your item, or you have to drop it off at your car and wait another hour or 2 in thier HUGE lines.
I have gone to 2 hard events now and I have never witnessed such gross negligence of crowd control, overcrowding, and general security team attitude problems as I have at Hard events. I don’t know if you’ve ever been in a place where a crowd wants to leave in a hurry without enough exits but I have and Im positive they are disregarding crowding laws. It is not uncommon to be hanging on to your friends’ hands with almost all your might to prevent the unstoppable tide of smashed sweaty human beings from ripping your group from each other, just to get to another area.
Last hard summer in LA, security wouldn’t let the crowd out at the end except for one tiny opening at the entrance. People eventually stampeded over a fence, smashing it to the ground.
Sound is hit or miss at Hard events, last year at the skrillex stage you had to stand directly in front of the stage to hear the bass. But there were trees in the way at that angle. And it was one of the smallest stage areas at the venue. Why on earth would they put someone like skrillex at the smallest area? Bad management that’s why. I can’t tell you how crammed everyone was. We had to lock arms with our group and form a packed human cannonball just to watch him without people ramming us apart to get by.
Also not uncommon is physical assault from their poorly trained security staff. Ask a security guard a benign question about perhaps where the water is, and you run the risk of being yelled at and chest bumped for getting to close. Somehow if you look shocked at their misguided aggressive nature, they seem to take that as belligerence to excuse physical abuse upon kids. I have personally witnessed a number of harmless kids being picked up by backward bent arms, slammed to the ground, grabbed and shaken by the neck while being threatened with more abuse.
I thought the first event was a fluke. But no, after the 2ndHard event with just awful awful management, I’ll never be back.
Its a shame too because they usually get pretty decent lineups. But it’s just not worth it. I’ll watch the talent elsewhere.