How the heck can one relax in the middle of 30,000 people and hourslong traffic jams?

That's what I asked my son when he kept bugging me about going to Sunday's Apple Chill festival in Chapel Hill.

Ignoring my better judgment, I relented and said, "yes," but daylong misgivings were justified Monday when I opened the newspaper and read about the violence that marred yet another Chill.

The gunfire that injured three people at the heavily policed festival has sounded the death knell for what started during the 1970s as a quaint arts-and-crafts street festival where local artisans could show and sell their pottery, exchange recipes for natural food dishes and pick acoustic guitars while doing their best James Taylor impersonations.

That cops from Chapel Hill and nine other jurisdictions were needed to patrol the crowd tells all you need to know about how the festival has progressed -- no, changed -- over the years.

It also tells you that the festival needed to be laid to rest before any attendees were. And Mayor Kevin Foy got his way. "I want to end Apple Chill," he said in a written statement before taking the matter to the full council Monday. "Yesterday was the last Apple Chill."

Town leaders surely know that the potential for something bad to happen at the festival long ago surpassed any potential positive benefits. That's why for the past few years they've considered canceling the festival but continued to permit it.

Complaints that the plug is being pulled because of the influx of thousands of young blacks who are drawn to the "After Chill" party seem baseless. Without supporting evidence that the opposition of Chapel Hill business owners and town leaders is racially motivated, we'll have to assume that they simply object to the escalating violence.

Who wouldn't?

Most of the people at the festival went there to chill: Police reported only 11 arrests, and most of those were for seat-belt and helmet violations.

At least three people, however, felt it was impossible to chill without a hand cannon.

Next April, when thousands of area residents lament the passing of this event, their anger should be aimed not at Chapel Hill officials but at the people who went to the festival to violently settle old beefs or provoke new ones.

Of course, the festival could have continued if some changes had been made to return it to its humble roots. For instance, admittance could have been restricted to people wearing socks with their Birkenstocks and Earth shoes or who have brown rice on their breaths, "McGovern" bumper stickers on their Volvos or who could answer the question, "When is naturalist Euell Gibbons' birthday?"

If they couldn't answer that question, perhaps they could answer this one: Why would somebody take a gun to a festival where the objective is to chill?

Turns out a few bad apples, when armed, not only can spoil the whole bunch, they can bring an end to a three-decades-old festival.

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