[![APD on 6th Ave.]]
[APD on 6th Ave.]: https://michaelhans.com/eclecticism/graphics/2003/02/graphics/apdon6thave-thumb.jpg {width=”150″ height=”67″}
Dad pointed out an article in the Anchorage Daily News about a teen dance that “erupted into what officials are calling a riot.”
Saturday’s event was the annual Fur Ball, a \$10-a-ticket dance for teens age 14 to 19 that’s part of Fur Rendezvous. In all, 1,352 teens got in, according to a ticket count, said Jay Savell, Egan operations manager. The event had a fire marshal-approved capacity of 1,500, he said.
Police said they were told that the dance was oversold. Not so, Savell said.
Some teens with tickets didn’t get in because the center knew it was approaching capacity. By the time Egan staffers finished counting tickets, the dance was shutting down.
Teens waiting outside grew impatient and tried to break the center’s glass windows, police said.
Inside, fights broke out when kids flashed gang signs and showed gang colors, police and teens said. Four or five on-duty police officers, 14 Egan security workers, a dozen other Egan staffers and 10 volunteers from Elmendorf Air Force Base were working security. But police thought the situation was getting out of hand.
Pretty disturbing, but I have to say that after working in teen dance clubs for as long as I did in Anchorage and having watched the shift in attitudes and behavior in the years, I’m not at all surprised that something like this finally happened.
I want to say more, but I’m tired and brain dead at the moment, and can’t coax much more out of me. Bleah. Maybe I’ll revisit this later on.