From insurance broking to foam parties...

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Foam parties, dunk tanks, wet T-shirt contests, mechanical “bermy bulls” and “bad girls” — it’s the kind of racy entertainment that’s drawing crowds to Dockyard on weekends (if you don’t know what a foam party is you are probably too old to go to one anyway).

The growing demand by Bermuda’s young people for an edgier style of entertainment has led to the launch of a number of new event promoters, including one of the largest, Fantastic 5 Entertainment Group, which is behind this weekend’s Bad Girls Reunion Beach Bash at Snorkel Park.

To stage bigger and better events, five top local promoters banded together last year to form Fantastic 5, including VIP Promotions’ Janson Cross, DJ iMega Jason Darrell, Wild Apache’s Rowan Ramotar, Gussie Godwin, and Cushi Ming.

Mr Cross, who has a master’s degree in international business from Georgia State University, left a successful career as an insurance broker in Bermuda to run the company full-time.

He has not looked back.

“I enjoy doing this so much,” he said. “The way I look at it is it’s not the end result, it’s the journey.

“People are starving for something like this in Bermuda. Bermuda is very conservative but the younger generation really want to express themselves. They are starting to free up, come out in their swim attire — everyone has a good time at our beach parties.”

Hundreds turned out for the Heineken Wet and Wild foam/water party last month by another group of promoters, Off Level Productions & YGS.

And despite the large crowds, the summertime parties have gone off at Dockyard largely free of any violence or other negative incidents.

Mr Cross said all his events take place with a full security team, police input, and they include ‘sweeps’ for any stashed weapons beforehand.

“Nowadays you never know what can happen, and we want to keep our events safe.” he said.

The wild parties also have given the Island plenty of publicity.

Popular Bad Girl Natalie Nunn, who has a few hundred thousand followers on Twitter, was tweeting about how much she loved Bermuda during and after last year’s event, Mr Cross said,

She has also mentioned Bermuda as her favourite place in magazine interviews and on celebrity websites such as mediatakeout.com.

Bad Girls Club is a hit reality TV show on the US Oxygen channel.

Last year’s Bad Girls event drew more than 1,000 people and Mr Cross is expecting more than 2,500 at Saturday night’s reunion event, hosted by Elease Donovan and Amy Cieslowski of Bad Girls Club Season 8, and returning Wilmarie of Bad Girls Club 6.

The line-up of DJs for the event includes iMega, YGS, King Jyr, DJ Aztec, and D’General.

The promoters plan to turn the venue into a huge water park for adults, with super soakers, foam pits (where people dance in a pit covered in bubbles pumped from foam machines), mechanical bulls, a fun castle, dunk tanks, slip n slides, a wet T-shirt contest, super abs contest, trampolines, beach balls, and more.

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