Dave Chappelle A No-Show At Powell Fundraiser

I haven't seen any news reports or blogs on the matter, so I'll just give my eyewitness accounting of the night. I showed up at seven to find a huge line of people waiting to get into 27 W.24th St. The event was supposed to start at 7 and go til 10, so I figured we'd get in soon enough. Unfortunately the line barely moved and I did not get inside until around 8:30. At the time Powell was speaking, but it was nearly impossible to hear him thanks to the acoustics of what looks like a decent sized club.

Volunteers at the door were generally helpful and gave out large palm cards and DVDs about Kevin. The bar was packed as was the entire venue. There had to be at least three hundred people in there. By the time I grabbed my $4 coke and found a decent spot, Powell was wrapping things up and everyone expected to see Chappelle walk out on stage soon thereafter. To my chagrin that was not the case.

The minutes and tracks from the DJ (very good I might add) rolled on and was interrupted once before 10pm to announce that someone had lost their cellphone. The crowd, as I'm sure you can guess, was booing that after 45 minutes of music.

Finally at 10:15, more than an hour after Powell went backstage, he came out again to announce that Chappelle had missed a first and second flight (from who knows where) and will not be attending. He told us he tried to get Comedian Chris Rock to come out and perform (who was backstage) but Chris declined to steal his buddy Dave's event.

So in the end, Powell told everyone that wasn't comped that the event will be rescheduled and that everyone write down their email address on the notepads of the volunteers to get into the next event. People were visibly upset, but mostly wrote down their info before leaving.

I generally wouldn't have a problem with this (logistics of events can be a real pain in the ass sometimes) but the way it was handled was poor. The crowd could have been notified an hour earlier, but that would have upset the bartenders and the venue, so people were kept in the dark until fifteen minutes after the event ended.

Now don't get me wrong, this doesn't change my support for Kevin. Towns is a real piece of work and he needs to be replaced by a better Democrat and Kevin Powell is it in 2008. I am glad to have contributed to his campaign and relish the thought that we can replace bad Dems with better ones, especially after Wednesday's FISA debacle. Still, the campaign needs to fine tune the event-planning portion of the campaign....hopefully the snags get ironed out when Chappelle makes it to the next event.