Electric Daisy Carnival premiere: Eyewitness accounts of Kaskade’s appearance
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Nina Lopez had gone with friends to see DJ Kaskade play a surprise set near Hollywood & Highland in Hollywood after hearing about it through Twitter. Kaskade pulled up on a large flatbed truck about 6:30 p.m., an hour before the premiere of ‘Electric Daisy Carnival Experience,’ a documentary about the big electronic music party of the same name, was to begin at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre.
Kaskade appears prominently in the film, so when he arrived, recalled Lopez, a massive crowd descended on the vehicle and filled the middle of the street. Lopez said this lasted for about an hour before police arrived.
Once it was clear the show was not going to happen, Lopez said fans and bystanders who had amassed in the streets started to become agitated at the police presence. “Everyone was [angry],” Lopez said, adding that the crowd ‘was completely peaceful. Yeah, we shut the street down, but we were only there to see Kaskade and check out the show. That’s it.”
Photos: Disturbance outside the Hollywood film premiere
By about 7:30, two LAPD helicopters were circling the area with spotlights as police cordoned off a perimeter on Hollywood Boulevard between Highland and La Brea Avenues.
A line of officers in helmets and riot gear stood near Hollywood Boulevard, and other officers were ordering crowds to disperse by 8:15 p.m. As helicopters hovered, groups of bystanders gathered near the corner of Sycamore Avenue and Hollywood Boulevard. They taunted police and flashed peace signs. A few crowd members taunted the police by ‘planking’ in the middle of Hollywood.
According to LAPD Sgt. Omar Cedre, the premiere, combined with turnout from Kaskade’s set, overwhelmed what wasn’t expected to be a major film opening.
“You have a lot of good people here mixed in with some bad ones, and this is what you get,” Sgt. Cedre said. He confirmed that non-lethal bean bags were fired towards the crowd, but that no injuries were reported.
Andrei Glickstein of Hollywood said he’d watched Kaskade’s flatbed truck being chased by fans down Hollywood Boulevard before turning left on Highland, and then stopping. He watched for about an hour as the crowd grew. Standing on a nearby street corner near Hollywood and Orange, he ran through film he’d shot of the police barricades colliding with the crowds.
“It was wild to see the whole thing unfold,” Glickstein said.
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-- Nate Jackson
