Spanish Fork City says Young and Dumb misrepresented postponed party
A flyer advertises a postponed Young and Dumb dance party that was scheduled to take place at The Oaks Event Center in Spanish Fork on Saturday, Feb. 13.
A screenshot of a video posted to Instagram by the party company Young/Dumb shows a DJ performing at an Aug. 7, 2020, party in Provo.
An event company that was recently fined $10,000 for violating a health order postponed a party that was supposed to take place on Saturday at a Spanish Fork-owned venue, and the city says the company misrepresented itself and never provided proper documentation for the event.
Last week, Young and Dumb, one of two companies that was fined by the Utah County Health Department on Feb. 8 for promoting a Halloween party near Utah Lake that violated COVID-19 guidelines, advertised a “limited entry” party at an undisclosed location and said it would require attendees to wear masks.
“This is THE party for you to let back, let loose go crazy & be a part of something wild,” a flyer for the party read. “We need all ur help to make this as unforgettable as possible.”
At 6 p.m. on Saturday, Young and Dumb announced that the party would take place at The Oaks Event Center in Spanish Fork, a 3,500-square-foot venue owned by the city.
A few hours later, Young and Dumb said it had decided to postpone the event to next week.
“OK, we have really, really bad news,” Kwaku El, co-owner of Young and Dumb, said in a video posted to Instagram. “So, the city of Spanish Fork has set its own rules separate from that of the county. And the city has basically said we can only have 125 people in this venue. Now, I don’t want to go to a party with 125 people.”
El, shown sitting on a stage in the event venue, said the city planned on sending plainclothes officers “so you won’t see them as cops. And so they can get to the dance floor, they can take pictures of you, they can take pictures of other people. And then they can send it to your schools, to your parents, and they can fine you. Essentially, Spanish Fork is trying to ‘eff’ you, and we don’t want that to happen.
“So I’m so sorry, but Spanish Fork, they’re being the bad guys,” the Young and Dumb co-owner said.
Spanish Fork Public Information Officer Nick Porter said on Monday that the city didn’t know Young and Dumb was hosting the event “until social media started going on Saturday and (the city) realized that they misrepresented who they were and what their purpose was for being at our facility.”
According to Porter, the group that applied to rent the facility represented itself as a Brigham Young University student group “that wanted to do kind of a low-scale Valentine’s activity.”
“So it wasn’t until Saturday that we realized this wasn’t any BYU group, this was the Young and Dumb group,” Porter said. “We told them our capacity was 125 people. As they started setting up Saturday, it became very clear they were planning on having more than that.”
Porter added that the group claimed “that they had a special event form or permit from the county,” but the city “asked for a copy of that and were never presented anything from the county.”
Aislynn Tolman-Hill, spokesperson of the Utah County Health Department, told the Daily Herald on Monday that Young and Dumb had not applied for or received an event permit for Saturday’s party.
In an Instagram post on Sunday, Young and Dumb said it had rescheduled the party for the upcoming weekend.
When asked about the possibility of the company trying to hold the party at the same location, Porter said that “unless something changes, our capacity is still going to be 125.”
