Photo Credit: Michael Lehet, click to view larger

The Northalsted Area Merchants Association has draw criticism and fire for their inclusion of a VIP section that they're selling for an additional $50 at this years Market Days.

Market Days is the midwest's largest street festival and typically draws in hundreds of thousands of festival goers over two days.  This year NAMA has moved the Addison stage to the parking lot on Halsted between Brompton and Cornelia.

There has been a huge uproar on Facebook since someone created a Group calling out NAMA, last night the group was at just over 400 members and at 2PM today it's close to 700.  There's a lively discussion between concerned community members and NAMA members trying to dispel what is and what isn't going on with the VIP Stage.

CLICK THROUGH TO SEE THE VIDEO

So I had to see it for myself, I grabbed my camera and headed off to check out this new VIP section.  Here's what I found:

From what it appears, there is only ONE section, the $50 Front of the House VIP Tickets, as the $30 tickets have been crossed off from the banner that adorns the tent where they are selling the VIP bracelets.  When I asked the attendants about the $30 tickets they did not know what was going on as they worked for the festival production company and weren't actually selling the tickets, they told me to check back in a few hours.

What I do know is that the stage is not obstructed, there is a single tent in the middle of the space, that's actually in front of the sound booth so that space was already going to be unviewable.  Since it appears as though they are only selling the $50 tickets there is plenty of open room for everyone to stand and everyone will have an unobstructed view of the stage.

What I did find though was a lot of angry and upset people.  The handful of people I talked to told me that they thought it was "BS that the merchants think that they can get away with charging $50, especially in a recession."  Other words I heard were "silly," "stupid," "why?" and more than a handful said that they were "just going to ignore that stage completely" in their silent protest.

While talking with people I actually ran into someone who is associated with Horseshoe Casino who are the sponors of the stage - and they are extremely concerned about the allegations that are floating around that they had something to do with the $50 VIP tickets - they didn't!  Horseshoe Casino is simply a sponsor of the stage and when they made this agreement many months ago there was no mention of a VIP section.  I think that it's wonderful to have a supportive organization like Horseshoe sponsor a stage at a primarily LGBT oriented street festival, so it's important to know that NAMA were the ultimate deciders to institute the VIP section.

It will be interesting to see how the weekend plays out, will people stay away from that stage?