Pubdate: Thu, 11 Mar 2004
Source: Creative Loafing Atlanta (GA)
Copyright: 2004, Creative Loafing
Contact:  http://www.atlanta.creativeloafing.com
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1507
Author: Scott Henry

CITY KILLS PROMOTER'S BUZZ

It Looks As If May 1 Will Blow By Without The Great Atlanta Pot Festival.

The sometimes-annual event in Piedmont Park was nixed in late February
by city officials, who say organizer Paul Cornwell didn't make the
application deadline.

Cornwell, however, contends that Atlanta's 2-year-old festival
ordinance, which requires applications to be filed at least 90 days
before a planned event, is unreasonably restrictive.

"Public spaces should be accessible to public gatherings in a timely
manner," he explains. "If someone had wanted to put on a concert to
protest the war in Iraq, in 90 days the war would've been over."

Cornwell says the city's decision will only provide fuel for a
constitutional challenge he filed last year in federal court against
the city's festival ordinance -- which itself was overhauled in 1999
after another Cornwell lawsuit negated the previous ordinance.

He says he also expects a decision soon in a third lawsuit he filed in
state court seeking damages against city parks officials for bumping
his event from Piedmont Park in spring 2002. That move cost him
$25,000, he says, because he'd already booked Parliament-Funkadelic.

Cornwell, a longtime rock promoter who previously brought the Black
Crowes and Cypress Hill to Piedmont Park for his popular,
pro-marijuana event, had been blocked from receiving a festival permit
for several years in the late '90s by Mayor Bill Campbell. In 2003, he
managed to hold the event in the park, with reggae artist Andrew Tosh
as the main attraction.

Cornwell says he hopes to reschedule this year's pot festival.
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MAP posted-by: Larry Seguin