Miami Man Is Trying to Get Smash Mouth to Perform at the Abandoned City Inn

Before the internet, if you had some sort of wild wish you wanted to make a reality, it helped to be terminally ill. But now anyone with Wi-Fi and a dream can give it a shot. Example: the Facebook event page "Lets Get Smashmouth 2 Perform at City Inn Hotel," a campaign trying to drum up support to get the '90s band Smash Mouth to play at Miami's abandoned City Inn, a decrepit, forsaken building at the corners of 79th Street and NW Seventh Avenue.

The description of the event on Facebook reads as follow:

It is my DREAM to see my favorite band SMASHMOUTH to perform at the littest venue I know...the historical CITY INN hotel.. It is an abandoned hotel in South Florida's premiere district for seady activity. That doesn't mean one of the greatest bands of this generation shouldn't perform. Why wait til a musician passes to celebrate their lives? Please invite everybody you know. I want mr. smash to get ahold of this. We'll settle for crazytown.

While this seems to be a tongue-in-cheek attempt to mock a band that once topped the charts with hits like "Walkin' on the Sun" and "All Star," the organizer of the event, Julio Brouwer, assures us his mission is an earnest one.

"Ever since a little movie called Mystery Men came out, I was intrigued by this band. I thought: Is this ska? Turned out it wasn't — apparently it was far from it, but it was apparently not something I could openly like around music elitist friends," Brouwer says. "So now, as an adult, all that music from the early '00s I was shamed into not being able to enjoy I openly parade my fandom. Its not ironic, more on the campy side of the spectrum. As for the show, I used to try to host fake events on FB they were mostly orgies, and the address would be a random Subway or 7-Eleven, all in the hopes of finding maybe one creep who thought it was legit. Then somebody made an event to bring Limp Bizkit to a Sunoco in a rural area, and seeing that gain some buzz selfishly made me want to do something similar with one of my favorite bands."
Brouwer says he is taking this mission more seriously than a pipe dream.

"Since the building isn't up to any code or anything, I'm hoping that if, miraculously, all goes according to plan that we can get some waivers. The main thing a contractor told me was there's a probable asbestos problem with a building like that, but seeing Smash Mouth with facemasks just makes the experience all the more memorable. The logistics need some work, admittedly, but if the city is willing to hear me out, I think we can come to a compromise."

It's a good attitude. After all, only shooting stars break the mold.