The Feb. 15 winter BellingJAM has been canceled due to the opposition of a State Street business.

Owner of D’Anna’s Café Italiano, Michael D’Anna, said he did not sign the permit to allow the event to take place this year because several of his employees’ cars were damaged at last year’s event.

He said people were in his back parking lot during BellingJAM last year, standing on parked cars looking over the fence at the event. His employee’s two-week-old car ended up with $2,500 worth of damage.

D’Anna said he was mostly upset because nobody would take responsibility for the damage.

“I’m not in opposition of BellingJAM, I’m just in opposition of them having it here,” D’Anna said. “I don’t want the same thing to happen on my property.”

The event was supposed to be hosted on the 1300 block of State Street, and was being planned by Western junior Justin Huerter, Western alumn Casey Desmond and the Innate screen printing shop, Huerter said. 

The event last year consisted of a rail jam, where skiers and snowboarders compete by doing tricks on a long rail placed at the end of a steep incline.

Huerter said there was also a live performance by Common Market, and a local art display in The Copper Hog.

BellingJAM is an effort to combine art and music into a rail jam that represents Northwest talent, Huerter said. This would have been the second annual BellingJAM.

“Downtown and Western is somewhat segmented,” Huerter said. “We wanted to pull Western students into the community downtown and show off the Northwest talent.”      

Huerter said BellingJAM is a free event that welcomes people of all ages from the community.

He said the effort that was put into the planning was volunteer work, and nobody was trying to make a profit from the event.

Their main motivation was to bring the community together, Huerter said.

Corey Warren, co-owner of Innate, said the first BellingJAM they hosted in 2009 seemed to go with almost no problems.

“The police commemorated us on our organization,” Warren said. “Of course there were some hiccups, as with anything big you try for the first time.”

Warren said the new plan is to have the BellingJAM either this summer or next winter, although he is not sure where it will be.

Western sophomore Gerrit Stoker skied in the rail jam last year and said there were some really talented skiers. He said this year there were more than 50 people who entered in hope of competing.

“I was pretty bummed,” Stoker said. “This was a big event that everybody was looking forward to.”

 D’Anna said if they do the event somewhere else next year he will be in absolute support of it.

 In replacement of the BellingJAM on Feb. 15, several events will be happening in an effort to raise money for Haiti.

The Copper Hog will be donating $1 for every pint of beer sold that evening. There will also be food, art and music.

There will be a candlelight procession down State Street to the Wild Buffalo in observation of the crisis in Haiti.

Common Market will be performing live at the Wild Buffalo, and profits from the evening will be donated to Yele Haiti’s Relief fund.

Comments (1)

Posted by GreenFrog, on Feb. 15, 2010 05:27AM It is a shame when one person can stand in the way of a community event. Especially when that person tells blatant lies. It is true that a car was damaged last year, but the owner of the Copper Hog immediately offered to pay the deductible for the insurance to fix it. It wasn't his fault, it was the fault of whatever idiot decided to stand on another person's car, but the offer was still made. To say that "nobody would take responsibility for the damage" is simply false.     Even though this event is not my thing at all and I would not have been there, I commend the organizers for their efforts in bringing people together under a common cause.     Those out there who stand in the way of community do not deserve the support of that community. Report

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