A woman was allegedly 'humiliated' while waiting outside the Powerstation before a concert on Saturday night. Photo / Google Maps
A woman was allegedly 'humiliated' while waiting outside the Powerstation before a concert on Saturday night. Photo / Google Maps
The owner of Auckland live event venue the Powerstation has been accused in a viral TikTok video of humiliating a concertgoer before a gig.
In the TikTok video, now viewed 300,000 times, 24-year-old Olivia Van-Hentel said she arrived at the venue at about 3.30pm on Saturday in preparation for using her special “meet and greet” ticket for the Lauren Spencer-Smith show.
As she lined up, Van-Hentel alleged she saw Powerstation owner Peter Campbell becoming “rude and aggressive” to people at the front of the line.
One of the fans at the front of the line, who wishes to remain anonymous, told the Herald Campbell had asked her “Do you have nothing better to do with your lives than wait for an artist?”
“He was starting to get visibly angry as I was the only one answering him back,” she claimed.
“This whole conversation I remained sitting on the stairs, I did not move or stand, but I spoke politely to him and kept eye contact with him. After that, he closed the door, and he would appear every 30 minutes or so.
“He came out with two rubbish bins and said to me, ‘You are my garbage girl for the night, make sure everyone puts their rubbish in there’ and put it in front of where I was. To which I laughed and said ‘okay’.”
The rubbish bin that was placed in front of the fan while she was waiting for the concert.
Campbell told the Herald he “can’t quite understand why you want to sit on the side of the road from 11am in the morning knowing that the doors are going to open or your party is going to start later in the day”.
Campbell did admit to telling her to “shut up”, but said it was out of frustration due to her allegedly blocking those coming in and out of the venue throughout the day.
He also admitted to putting the rubbish bin in front of her and telling her to be the “garbage monitor”.
He denied singling out the fan but admitted she had come back at him with “unnecessary comments” when he had questioned the reasoning behind being there so early.
“It was just a basic interaction with someone who was being less than to people having to get in and out of the door,” Campbell said.
He did not want the interaction to take away from the ultimately successful event, and said he and his staff were just “keeping an eye on them”.
“We were keeping an eye on them and ensuring that first of all, they aware of the fact that they’re sitting on a footpath and there’s public trying to get by,” Campbell said.
It did not surprise Campbell this interaction had gone viral on social media, claiming the demographic of people going to the concert had “a lot of time to spend on Tiktok”.
Rachel Maher is an Auckland-based reporter who covers breaking news. She has worked for the Herald since 2022.
