Trashgate 2014: Oh, the Humanity!
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| This is what the stadium looked like BEFORE the tailgaters filled the stadium |
On June 21, Luke Bryan, Dierks Bentley, Lee Brice and Cole
Swindell rolled into town looking to party —and party they did, delivering a
rippingly entertaining evening of music to a record-breaking crowd of happy
fans. This was Bryan’s first stadium show as a headliner, and as such promised
to be something memorable: what would he do, given the enormity of the venue
and occasion?
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| Luke Bryan with rally cap on |
Rise up out of the ground astride a stuck? Punctuate hit
songs with fire works? Invite each one of his opening acts onstage for a
special duet? Yes to all of the above. As far as The Inky Jukebox is concerned, pretty much every one of the 53,000
fans had an awesome time. Did a few get drunk? Why yes they did. Had many been
holding their own parking lot parties all day? Why yes they had.
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| Luke Bryan doing a little drinking of his own |
The only thing you’ll hear or read about the concert is the furor
generated by the trash left in the pre-paid lots in a city still reeling,
apparently, with high dudgeon over last year’s Kenny Chesney show. The trash,
however, is not what should be causing outrage here: it’s the complete loss of journalistic
integrity and ignorant bandwagon-jumping by people who ought to know better and
who weren’t there.
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| Lee Brice, Mr. "Parking Lot Party" |
The Inky Jukebox
is appalled to find that some of her fellow Pittsburghers and online friends of
friends have gone so far (into their own sense of moral outrage) to call for a
ban on drinking and concerts in the city, a special tax on anyone entering the
city, and for country music fans to leave town. Can you HEAR yourselves, y’all?
Seriously? The only shit that needs to stop RIGHT NOW is this nonsense.
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| Dierks Bentley, Mr. "Drunk on a Plane" |
Here is a list of considerations the Trash-Talkers have
failed to educate themselves about concerning this concert.
The notion that plenty
of concerts are held at Heinz Field (home of the Steelers), and only country
music fans desecrate the parking lots.
Actually, Heinz Field has only seen five concerts in the
past three years: Kenny Chesney (twice); Taylor Swift (twice); and Luke Bryan.
As far as The Inky Jukebox can tell,
all of these acts are Country. I don't recall people complaining about Taylor Swift tailgaters.
Only people not from
Pittsburgh attend these shows. Only people from Pittsburgh attend these shows.
No Steelers fans attend these shows.
All three are dead wrong. The summer shows at Heinz Field
attract an enormous fan base for country music that stretches from Philadelphia
to Columbus, Cleveland and down to West Virginia. Not all stadium acts perform
at other venues. The crowd consists of people who have driven a LONG way to be
here; sailed up and down river to be here, and include a large proportion of
Steelers fans. Many of these fans appreciated the tribute to the late Chuck
Noll that Bryan thoughtfully included in his show.
This was a
run-of-the-mill show.
No it wasn’t: it’s the only show at Heinz field this year
(Chesney and Swift aren’t touring, and it was the biggest-ever crowd Heinz
Field has EVER had for a concert. It was also Luke Bryan’s first EVER stadium
show, and therefore of some historic significance that drew an unusually large
crowd from far afield.
All the parking lots
in downtown Pittsburgh and which service the stadium were completely trashed by
reckless, irresponsible rednecks.
Not so. Only the PRE-PAID stadium lots had a trash problem;
they were the lots designated for TAILGATING, a great American tradition
engaged in not only by country fans, but by concert-goers and sports fans
EVERYWHERE, including STEELERS FANS AND PANTHER FANS AT HEINZ FIELD IN THE
FOOTBALL SEASON. In order to manage the inflow of traffic from 53,000 people in
a city with Pittsburgh’s topography, it makes sense to designate parking lots
for those who are coming from afar and who pay for the privilege of parking in
advance with their ticket. These lots open at 9AM, and come with rules which
fans are made aware of. They include directions about trash collection, and
specifically close in time to allow workers to begin trash clean-up during the
show. Parkers are not only invited and expected to tailgate, but they are told
that the parking lot authorities will be cleaning up.
Concert-goers have no
idea what to do with their trash, so, not caring, they leave it everywhere.
Pre-paid Lot parkers are given two garbage bags when they
enter the Lot: one for recyclables, and one for garbage. These they leave by
their vehicle when they enter the show, so that the crew can take them away.
However, the crew have nowhere to put them, because dumpsters – or enough
dumpsters - have not been provided. Therefore, they pile up near the exits.
When cars leave, they run over bags, splitting them, and scattering trash.
Concert-goers are riotous
drunken rednecks who should not be allowed near a civilized city.
Tailgaters are there to party. They grill food; they drink
beers; they play games. They listen to music. They have fun. This is what
tailgaters of every stripe do. The tailgaters at Luke Bryan’s show (and Kenny
Chesney’s shows) have been there since 9AM when the Lots open, partying. By the
time they have to leave the Lot at 8PM, they have been at it for 11 straight
hours. People generate a lot of trash in confined spaces over 11 hours. They
drink a lot of beer.
Country music fans
urinate everywhere like pigs.
If you have been drinking beer for 11 hours, wouldn’t you have to pee? Even if you’d only had
one beer, or a glass of lemonade, or even water — over the course of 11 hours,
wouldn’t you have to pee? No matter how old you were, wouldn’t you have to pee?
And where would you go? The Lot authorities didn’t provide enough port-a-johns
to service 53,000 people. That’s a fact. Lines were long and the average wait
was 45 minutes. Hold it for 45 minutes and tell me you wouldn’t pee wherever
you could. Ten arrests were made for public urination. Only ten!!!!
Drunken country music
fans got fisty.
True, several fans got into fights. Hey; they’d been
drinking. The same can be said of any football game on any given weekend.
Why didn’t these
hooligans transport their own trash home with them?
There is no room in the trunk for bags of trash after you’ve
put the folding table and chairs in your trunk, and the cooler and the grill.
Leaving sticky bags of liquid and food garbage in your locked car for several
hours in the midsummer heat won’t make your car smell nice when you drive home.
Surely there is room
in an RV for trash.
RVs weren’t allowed in the lots. Only passenger cars.
The Police were there
to help.
There was a huge Police presence at the show. The Inky Jukebox spent an hour after it
ended watching them stand around doing nothing to assist a horrible traffic
situation caused by people trying to exit lots into the highway entrance lanes,
causing gridlock. This caused people in trucks to circumvent the exits and
drive over trash bags in the dark.
It was Luke Bryan’s
fault.
Get real.
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| Dierks expresses how we all feel |
Also bear in mind that, as the Mayor admitted, all of the
lots were cleaned “spotless” by 10AM the next morning, by workers paid to do
so. The stadium lots are not themselves in residential neighborhoods; who was
inconvenienced? I am sure the tax-paying city workers who earned overtime were
glad to make a bit of cash. I am sure the City itself was glad of the fee it
charged the promoter to host the concert. I am sure Heinz Field vendors made
bank. I am certain the bars and restaurants in the area all did smashing
business. The Pittsburgh Parking Authority cashed in on all that downtown
parking.
I know that no-one to whom this post is aimed will likely
read it, but someone has to offer a counterpoint to the crazy-ass blown-out-of-proportion
incendiary and utterly biased reporting (and posting, and re-posting) that’s
going on out there. Get it together, Pittsburgh.
The End.
