HE 2004 West Cancelled due the worker lockout


clbeanz

Showing 3 responses by albertporter

I too am sorry about this, I was covering this for Audiogon and had plans to enjoy that beautiful city.

Worse still, I will miss out on the invitation to audition a couple of Audiogon members systems after hours. What a disappointment!

Hope they don't wind up like Chicago, losing all audio trade shows. I enjoyed the Chicago show more than Vegas, this during the good old days when Chicago had a really strong high end show.

Chicago was fun to visit with it's incredible architecture, its beautiful museums, world class restaurants and local pubs serving an unbelievable array of single malt scotch. The audio community (including myself) spent lots of money in that city and they ran us off by treating exhibitors unfairly.
Budrew,

Audiogon has the images and should post them very soon. I think management was concerned over my coverage of the Patricia Barber live event which was forbidden to be recorded or photographed.

I got special permission and sent images to Positive Feedback (my other new employer) and Audiogon. Hope they show up soon, some of the concert images are nice.

Max,

It is very disappointing to me that the Chicago show is no more. I loved that city and looked forward to the excellent food, especially the Italian!

An example of how silly it got just before everyone left, a major high end manufacturer (like Jeff Rowland) was hooking up his equipment without having the union electrician in the room. The union charges $50.00 (or whatever the number) to plug the power cable into the wall.

The designer plugged it in, knowing the gear needed extended warm up and when the union people saw this, they threatened to close the room and cut the power off.

My son has been safe to plug in AC cords since he was eight years old. When the local trades people force intelligent people to compromise their exhibit over some silly rule, it changes things for the worse.

The same thing happened with empty cardboard boxes, moving equipment without permission and using extension cords. One manufacturer (a very good friend of mine) fought them and subsequently "lost" several pieces of equipment. When he went into a local office to complain, one of the missing pieces, (an equipment rack) was beside the official's desk, serving as a work table.

He still gets angry when he tells the story.
Agreed Omains, its a shame because the high end audio business needs more positive things happening, not negative.