Have you seen those Bud Light commercials promoting a party in Whatever, USA? It turns out that the event is located in a small Colorado town and many of the locals aren’t excited about the party.
Anheuser-Busch’s Bud Light took over Crested Butte, a town located around 200 miles southwest of Denver, reports CBS Denver. The event already got started and the main street, Elk Avenue, has already become blue. Bud Light was given a permit last week to completely take over the town, but many aspects of what the company plans to do is still a secret. Even the mayor didn’t know before it was set up.
“There are certainly a lot more details that I didn’t know about that are great, it’s good to see,” Mayor Aaron Huckstep told CBS Denver.
Bud Light agreed to pay $500,000 for the permit and promised to set up and tear down its decorations by the end of the three-day event. However, they didn’t go after locals approval and many have started to voice their displeasure.
“A lot of people are leaving town, because they don’t want to hear the noise,” resident Emily Rothman told ABC News. She added that she didn’t want her 12-year-old son to see the activities and think they were ok.
“This whole thing is a complete snafu from start to finish,” another resident, Kevin McGruther, told ABC News. “The community members are very stressed out and many are turning on the event and each other.”
David Rothman told The New York Times that the event is “vulgar and it’s cheap.”
Bud Light is flying 1,000 young adults to the town for the event. They will be mixed in with the crowd that tried to get a hold of one of 4,000 wristbands on Thursday, which was another challenge. “I waited in line for about 15 minutes, I did get a little manhandled at the door,” Paul Elkins told CBS Denver.
Huckstep has defended the decision to host the event, though. “It is not every day that you have a company that comes in and says: ‘We want to donate half a million to your community. We want to hire your locals. We want to work with your bars and restaurants,’” he told the Times.