Neon Cactus DJ fired after equipment reportedly damaged

Most people come to the Neon Cactus for good times, good drinks and good music. But on Saturday evening, one of the bar’s DJs left without a job and accused the company of treating him unfairly because of his skin color.

Isaiah Neil, known as DJ Endy, was fired Saturday night, but that’s one of the only things the managers of the Neon Cactus and the DJ can agree on.

In a statement posted on the Neon Cactus’ Facebook page, said Neil’s laptop was damaged after somebody threw a drink at it Saturday night.

“I told him to turn off the laptop and turn it back on which he did and the laptop did come back on,” Angie Brown, co-owner of the Neon Cactus, said Tuesday. “He claims it was ruined. I don't believe it was.”

Neil said that when he turned on his computer, it flickered back and forth between on and off.

The Cactus said that Neil asked that they pay $2,500, but the business declined and said he should have had his equipment insured. Neil denies that he ever put a price on the repairs.

“My response is you can go Walmart, buy one for a couple hundred,” Brown said.
Brown said that all of their DJs are self-employed and are not on the payroll.

The Neon Cactus claims that the next day, owners received a call from someone claiming to be Neil's manager and threatening to sue.
“After complaints on his performance every night lately and recent negative attitude towards customers requesting songs and refusing to follow direction on what the club wanted we decided not to bring him back,” the company said on the Facebook post.

Neil has a similar story but a different account for how the phone call with his manager went.

“Standing up for myself after management's call to play a different genre of music was met with hostility by some patrons who in turned threw drinks at me and my equipment, damaged my gear,” Neil said on a Facebook post. “The management staff of the Neon Cactus said they would lend no support for repairs or replacements.”

Neil’s manager, Ashton Morgan, called the Cactus the next day and talked to Angie Brown.

“She assures me that my manager threatened to sue, which my manager says never happened,” Neil said on the Facebook post. “My manager did say that they would like to speak to their lawyer and have their lawyer speak to them, which the mother then informed my manager that she would have to get with her lawyer, too, with my manager stating OK. The word 'sue' was never mentioned by my manager.”

Neil said on the post that he was fired for wanting fair treatment and that the Neon Cactus fears a lawsuit “due to a pending racial lawsuit,” and that he was their only African-American DJ.

On the Neon Cactus’ website, two DJs are listed: Leo Romney, known by his DJ name as Reign, and Jerome Gee, known as MMJ Efekt.

Romney is a Black man.

“The DJ that's currently there right now is a DJ that I brought in and he just started a couple of months ago,” Neil said. “At that time I was the only African-American DJ that they had there.”

Neil said there has been a pattern of discriminatory behavior at the Neon Cactus.
“The owners of Cactus basically made me switch who I am as a DJ because they wanted to keep a certain crowd of people out of their establishment,” Neil said. “I’ve had several racial remarks about the type of music that was played to keep a certain crowd of people out of there."

"I was never treated as an equal," Neil said. "The owner made several racial comments to me. ... (A co-owner) said, 'I keep Endy on a tight leash.'"
When asked whether he would file a lawsuit, Neil said he did not feel comfortable answering at this time.