Balliceaux owner and regular acts respond to booker’s resignation after Blackface Halloween costume spurs outrage

by | Oct 31, 2016 | COMMUNITY

Local bar and music venue Balliceaux has faced a whirlwind of social media fury after their booker dressed in Blackface for a recent Halloween party.

Local bar and music venue Balliceaux has faced a whirlwind of social media fury after their booker dressed in Blackface for a recent Halloween party.

Chris Bopst had been booking shows at the Fan hot spot for sometime but that appears to have come to an end after he wore the controversial Halloween costume.

Bopst, who has for years offered booking space to an exceedingly diverse range of local musicians and artists, took to facebook to apologize for the costume.

“I want to apologize to everyone I offended. I deeply regret any pain I caused for my actions,” he wrote. “I’ve experienced an acute moral revulsion with myself that I can’t accurately describe. It’s a queasy sickness; an all-composing sense of regret twisting and turning in my stomach. All I know is that I deserve it.”

Balliceaux’s owner, Steve Gratz, said he was in total shock after seeing how events played out. Gratz said Bopst, who helped found GWAR and was often known for making controversial remarks and decisions, was one of many guests at their Saturday night party and the costume flew under his radar.

“No one even mentioned it,” Gratz said, noting Bopst’s “horrible judgement” in this scenario.

“Chris is a good man at heart and just made a very stupid decision. We do not in any way support what happened but we know it’s kind of impossible to think of Chris as a racist,” he said. “He is resigning. It’s a very bad situation for his family.”

Gratz called his bar “a very open and loving place,” where events like the queer dance party Animal and the “K-pop” (Korean dance music) parties are regulars on the calendar.

Bopst, who announced his resignation on Balliceaux’s official Facebook page, published a lengthy apology on his personal Facebook wall.

And one local performer is coming to his aid – lead singer of The Big Payback, Kelli Strawbridge.

Strawbridge, who is the Black frontman of the local James Brown cover band and creator of the Hustle Podcast, thinks the social media outrage has become overblown. He’s known Bopst since 2012 when he first started gigging at Balliceaux.

“I don’t think Bopst’s actions were racist, just ignorant and arrogant,” he said, going as far as to suggest he shouldn’t lose his job over the costume. “The comments made by others are misguided as well… there are so many injustices against Black people.”

But not everyone is so forgiving. Mark Cheatham of the Cheats Movement blog and and podcast announced his “break up” with the venue in a post over the weekend.

He acknowledged Bopst’s history of booking local Black rappers and pointed to that being a reason why he should have known better.

“You financially benefit from me and those like me,” he wrote. “You like me enough to take my dollar and even respect the culture (but maybe on second thought “respect” is not the right word) – yet I guess there is always that line right…and you’ve crossed it.”

People continue to take to Balliceaux’s Facebook page to negatively review the bar, but Gratz hopes to stem the tide and make things right.

“Everyone is offended by the action,” he said. “We just wanted to say this is not the person we’ve known. That is in no way forgiving the act. That is clear from his termination. We all wanted time to talk and make sure the statement was clear.”

And Strawbridge hopes the community can see amends are being made where they can.

“Forgiveness is a virtue,” he said.

Check out Bopst’s apology in it’s entirety below:

I seriously screwed up.

I would like to apologize to humanity for my failure as a human being. Recently, I wore a black face clown outfit thinking I was being thought-provoking and funny.
It wasn’t until I woke up Sunday morning that I realized how seriously wrong I was.
Since then, I’ve experienced an acute moral revulsion with myself that I can’t accurately describe. It’s a queasy sickness; an all-composing sense of regret twisting and turning in my stomach.

All I know is that I deserve it.

In writing this, I want in no way to absolve myself of my actions. People have every right to be angry; I am disgusted with myself and I will be for the rest of my life. I will never stop being ashamed.

I’ve demeaned myself, my family and all those close to me. No apology will ever be enough.
Racial prejudice is very real. Conscious or unconscious, the sting of racism is something no white person in this culture can ever feel. It is reserved exclusively to be felt by people of color. As a white male, I know that I will never know just how truly awful it really is and it is my responsibility-especially as an American Caucasian- to acknowledge and fight against the ongoing scourge of racism.

If anything can be salvaged from this mess, I had a frank discussion with my daughter about racism and why what I did is wrong. We talked about slavery, the origin of blackface, how black people weren’t treated like human beings and how black people have only been able to vote as long as Daddy has been alive. I could tell she couldn’t grasp the enormity of it.

“People used to keep people as slaves?” She asked.

“Yes, baby, they shipped black people in chains from Africa to work for rich white landowners.”
She thought about it for a moment.

“That’s not right.”

I went on to tell her that some people today still believe that you can judge a person by the color of their skin and that racism is still very much alive.

“Nobody is born a racist, baby, they are raised that way”
“Those must be some stupid parents.”

This is a discussion we will continue to have as she gets older. I regret that my actions were the cause of my daughter’s first real experience with racism, but it is important for her to know that Daddy seriously messed up. It wasn’t right and I wanted to make sure she knew it.
I hope against hope that she will live in a world without racial diversions. I will do everything in my power to continue to make that world a possibility.

I also hope that eventually this reprehensible act will not define me in the public eye. My family, friends and co-workers had nothing to do with my actions and I deeply regret making them guilty by association.

This whole experience has been intensely traumatic and I deeply regret my decision to flaunt hurtful racial stereotypes.

I hope that you can forgive me.
BOPST

Brad Kutner

Brad Kutner




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