End of Boycott as Gigantic Vintage and Pizza-a-go-go make amends - By N.L. Belardes

Apparently good things do come to those who wait. As most of you know the story by now, Gigantic Vintage was allegedly intimidated into leaving the downtown area by once show promoter for Jerry's Pizza, a bat-wielding Nate Berg. Unbelievable that this could happen within a rock's throwing distance from the downtown Bakersfield police station, but that's another story. These bat wielding occurances have been corroborated as several downtown sources have provided written statements attesting to being witnesses and having been intimidated by Nate Berg who has since been arrested for unrelated incidences of burglary, consequently was sentenced, and now, is no longer the Pizza-a-go-go show promoter. He's the very person who recently tried intimidating me yet once again by claiming to several Bakersfield folks in a recent email, "...you are all good men, except for you, Jenny and Belardes."

I'm not a good man for being concerned for our city's children? Or, I'm not a good man spreading the news of the boycott that I didn't call but Bakersfield musicians did? Or I'm not a good man for standing up to threats of lawyers for posting blogs about Berg's intimidating practices? I take pride in my First Amendment Rights to show concern for where teenage kids, easily impressionable by questionable figures, might hang out... Parents need to be diligent for the safety of our own future: kids.

Resulting from such events was the relocation of Gigantic Vintage and an ensuing boycott by many Bakersfield bands.

With all that said, Gigantic, not me, but Gigantic has called for an end to the boycott of Jerry's Pizza in a statement released online today:

As most of you know, we at gigantic vintage were having problems in the past with jerry's pizza show promoter nate berg, he pretty much shut our shows down at our 19th st. location. as most of you have heard he is no longer booking shows at jerry's! the good folks at jerry's came to us to apologize for what nate had done and offered to let us book shows at jerry's in order to make up for it and help make jerry's a badass venue once again. we at gigantic decided to take them up on the offer and we will now be booking shows at jerry's and possibly some at montgomery world. now that nate is gone all you jerry's haters need to know that it is once again cool and okay to go to jerry's pizza! you definitely need to in order to support our shows at least and help everyone else by going to their shows too! starting july 22nd our shows will be moved to jerry's pizza. all shows prior to the 22nd will still be held at montgomery world plaza. any thoughts? let us know.
alex & aj @ gigantic vintage

I still hope Jerry's Pizza's underground cavern gets an entire snappy Gigantic-style AJ and Alex make-over to clean up such a dark chasm in Bakersfield music history.

This entry was posted by N.L. Belardes, on Saturday, July 09, 2005. You can leave your response.