IT ISN’T PERFECT

Poptopia, a festival that showcased Southland pop acts for the past five winters, is taking the year off for financial reasons, co-founder Tony Perkins said.

“It’s a vision, it’s a quest, it’s great to do it, but it’s not happening this year,” Perkins said. “It should be just a hiatus.”

The event, which grew out of a biweekly pop club Perkins promoted in the mid-1990s, has had trouble attracting sponsors, he acknowledged. “The demographic is a bit difficult to sell,” he said. “It’s not like selling punk bands or rock bands.”