Comments about the 2022 Asian Collective Night Market in Howard County

I want to lead with this – the vendors and performers seemed to have no idea of the gross mismanagement and did their absolute best in a shitty situation!! Please still support these local businesses.

But I digress. This was such a dangerous event. Unbelievably long traffic, there was at least one crash on our route to the venue. Roads and highway were backed up for miles. Apparently there was little to no traffic control, and I witnessed those attempting to direct traffic doing so with no real skill or knowledge. Clearly they were unprepared. Lines to even get into the venue were long, like 30+ minute wait. And the lines INSIDE to get food we’re an hour+ wait.

We parked and arrived around 5:15pm (for context we left the house at 2pm. It should have been a 30 minute drive). At that point we heard from people inside that food was already running out. No doubt because vendors couldn’t resupply because their co workers were in traffic! There’s a pic floating around of an employee running to the venue alongside traffic carrying a vat of boba. Pretty sure it was Nan Xiang Express in Ellicott City (amazing business, please give them support).

Inside was PACKED. It’s been said by many people that around 20K tickets were sold. GROSSLY OVERSOLD. Especially since they (allegedly) only sold around 5K parking tickets. Of course we’ve had no transparency from the organizers but these numbers seem legit given the crowds we all saw and the fact that this info is coming from people involved in some way.

There was NO accessibility on site. Barely any seating, no shade, at 87 degrees. Water stations ran out of water. People were passing out left and right. I heard there was only one paramedic on site, and staff were grossly unprepared to assist those in medical need. Someone literally could have died.

Given we are still navigating COVID-19 and now MONKEYPOX this was such a gross mismanagement. The event was all outside, so with the expected numbers people could have reasonably social distanced. But as it was people were pressed together like sardines. Another person in the FB group pointed out that if a loud noise had gone off a stampede could have easily formed and hurt so many people.

Lastly, the event wasn’t even in the fucking fairgrounds. It was in the PARKING LOT. It feels like they purposely misled us in thinking this would take place in a much larger space. I have been to high school carnivals with more space than this.

Please check out the new Facebook group “Asia Collective Night Market Disaster” – This was created in the likely event that the current Facebook group is taken down. I am just one person who experienced this – Many more we’re impacted much worse than myself.

This event was oversold with no one checking the tickets for the paid parking nor the entrance tickets causing overwhelming traffic on the roads with no traffic control leading us to be stuck in dangerous bumper to bumper traffic for over an hour thus not letting us attend the event safely. Parking passes should not have been sold if they were not going to be utilized. Furthermore there should’ve been people to check the parking and entrance tickets to AVOID none ticket holders from getting in so the fact that the organizers decide not to check for tickets caused more chaos. Everything about this event was poorly executed with no regards for anyone’s safety.

I attended with my wife and kids. We live in Hagerstown so it was a bit of a drive, and when we got caught in the traffic we were shocked, we had no idea there would be the turnout there was. That said we stuck it out, and after an hour or so of fighting through traffic with no police or traffic control whatsoever until we arrived at the event itself. We finally parked and got into the event around 3:30pm.

The lines for food were already an hour deep and trash cans at capacity. The sea of bodies only kept growing as we were there, the lines we 50-75 people deep at at least two entrances at once.

While waiting in line for food for over an hour, one young lady in a line next to us fainted and had to be revived and escorted to an ambulance by an EMT. Then around 5pm we had to seek out shade for my daughter to cool off, which consisted of huddling behind one of the inflatable decorations on the ground. By now all the trash cans were just mounds of garbage spreading out on the ground. We thought it was odd the MC in between musical artists made a point to mention the location of the medical staff to the crowd, now we know why. I suppose the poor woman we saw faint wasn’t an isolated case.

By 6:30pm we had enough, we were all still hungry and overheated and just wanted out since the flow of people into the event never slowed down the whole time we were there, and we could see rt70 E was still a parking lot from the venue with more people coming .

On the way out we hit the porta-pots, which were well away from the main event, and strangely located next to a bunch of seating in a gravel lot. The John’s were clean enough, but every single hand washing station was out of water, so people were either skipping it, or walking up the hill a bit to steal water bottles out of cases sitting in the sun to use, no idea who’s they were.

I will point out some positives however since it wasn’t all bad. The vibe was very chill, with so many reasons for people to be angry or rude, we experienced nothing but friendly interactions with everyone, it was actually really nice. Also the food was good, albeit a little overpriced and small portions considering the wait to get it. The musical acts were doing all they could and were really quite good as well, I really liked Alice Park and Jupiter Rex Band.

I hope if this event is to continue they organize significantly better, utilize the proper facilities at the fairgrounds, and worry more about the experience being good than their profit margins. This event could have been so very amazing, but because of how it was organized, it was an epic failure.