An Open Letter to Seattle's Douchebags: Knock it the Hell Off!
Oh Seattle, you make us feel so old.
It was maybe a year ago and some, while we were wallowing in the mud at Sasquatch, clutching our $8 cans of Budweiser, when we finally said to ourselves, "You know what? Outdoor festivals suck."
And then we recoiled in horror. Hating festivals is the very definition of getting old, isn't it? Really. There's an accepted narrative explanation of this phenomenon at pseudo-hipster bastions like The Stranger: anyone who gripes about stuff that's supposed to be fun, like rock festivals or clubbing or bar-hopping, is by definition a curmudgeon who really just hate the kids having fun. But, having had some time now to reflect on that first, god-awful thought, as well as having attended a number of festivals since, we've overcome our initial shame at our hatred of these events and realized, we're not old, we're just not douchebags. And to be fair, Seattle, the vast majority of you are not douchebags, either; but there's an extremely loud and irritating minority who are, and we're sick of them making everything miserable. Coupled with them are their apologists, the organizers, promoters and corporate sponsors (Stranger included) who aid and abet the bad behavior of our douchebag minority in the hopes of raking in a few more bucks.
Witness the debacle that was this last weekend's Capitol Hill Block Party. Arriving later in the day for a set by one of Seattle's best outfits, the Blue Scholars, we got to enjoy the handiwork of the planning genius who set up the gates. Three aisles leading to three entrances, one for ticket-holders, one to buy tickets, and one for will call. As it turned out, the line marked "will call" was actually for guests and exhibitors, and was completely empty. The line for buying tickets was, mostly, also empty. However, the line for the actual will call, which was inexplicably located in the line marked "ticket holders," was the entire length of its allotted aisle and then doubled back all the way to the box office, so that the end of the line waiting to receive the tickets they bought in advance was getting in the way of the people buying tickets day-of. For forty minutes, we stood in line with a couple hundred other people waiting to receive hand-stamps from the one person manning that gate. Brilliant.
Then, once inside, we discovered that it was essentially pointless to have even bothered with the street-fair aspect of the Block Party, as the place was too packed full to allow movement. And for what? Was the mixture of pot-smoking punks, underage emo kids desperate for an all-ages show in this anti-music town, and various sun-soaked drunks really that into the music? Of course not. As Geologic desperately exhorted the crowd to sing along with the Blue Scholars' feel-good hip-hop choruses, Sabzi was forced to cut the beat entirely just so you could sort of hear the crowd chanting something back.
Needless to say, we decided after the Blue Scholars finished that we'd had enough and skipped out on the Smashing Pumpkins-lite (a.k.a., the Silversun Pickups).
But to be fair to the Block Party, it was every bit as shitty as every other festival we've been to. Back at the beginning of the month, we headed down to the Seattle International Beer Festival at Seattle Center. It was a nice hot day, the perfect time to sit back and enjoy some cool, hard-to-come-by beers. But that of course would have been asking too much of a beer festival. Just answer us this, Seattle festival aficionados: Who the hell pays $20 for 10 tickets and a six-ounce tasting glass with the intent to go and get drunk? And what sad-sack lush actually manages to get drunk at what's essentially a tasting? (We're looking in your direction, mid-life-crisis biker dude who kept falling over and vomiting all over yourself.)
And then there was last year's Endfest down at White River. Now, it would be going too far to try to complain about White River Amphitheater, which everyone already knows sucks. No, our real complaint are the jerks who show up. We're working on a story trying to get some pictures of Eagles of Death Metal (consigned to playing in the concourse), yet a wall of frat-boy surfer bums keeps elbowing us back when we ask, politely, "Could I slip through just to take a picture?" So sure, White River blows, but is this year going to be any better down at Qwest Field's parking lot? Somehow, we doubt it.
We could go on--how last year at the Fremont Oktoberfest we were ushered in (at full ticket price) without being told they were 30 minutes from closing. Or how you have to fight through a line at Bumbershoot to get a wrist-band to see the bands you want to see even though you already paid through the ass for a three-day pass months before. And getting in your way, constantly, are gaggles of tanned, shirtless college-aged guys with shaggy hair and sunglasses, who use words like "bro'" and "dude" way too much. Or there's the uptight guy in khakis who shows up late and just shoves you to get by, because wherever he's going is more important than the fact you're standing there. These twin plagues infest entire neighborhoods (Belltown, Fremont, Capitol Hill) on Friday and Saturday nights, overrunning otherwise decent bars and clubs, arriving drunk, behaving louchely towards women, drinking well drinks and cheap domestic beer. Outside they yell, fight, litter and break things in the street at odd hours for no reason.
And this behavior is not without consequences for the rest of us. Not only are we denied reasonable enjoyment of otherwise patently un-hip events like Oktoberfest, but Mayor Nickels is turning around and using this bad behavior to try to Disney-fy the city by regulating the hell out of nightlife. Years after the teen-dance ordinance show-down, we still don't have a lot of all-ages shows, a disappointing failure for which the Vera Project alone cannot be the answer. The roving crowds of weekend drunks will no doubt find new locales in the event their lifeblood of dollar PBRs is cut off, but what's going to happen to places like Capitol Hill or Fremont, where the original character of quirky, creative communities has first been disrupted by a huge party scene and then stomped out in favor of businesses more in tune with the desires of condo-owning yuppies?
It's bad enough that gentrification is forcing out all but the highest wage earnings from what are supposed to be the city's most vibrant neighborhoods, but to be abused by what amount to rude, drunken tourists in our own communities while having any open-to-the-public event turned into a frat-party, its mission co-opted to the twin pursuits of getting drunk and getting laid, is getting seriously old. We're sorry to say it, but we've got no idea how to solve this problem. Really, we gave Pioneer Square to the douchebags years ago, and figured that was enough. Well, turns out, we were wrong. All we know is, we can fight it out through dive bars with bikers shooting pool, handle the roughest, rudest crowd at Neumo's or the Croc, yet can't handle a Friday night at the Triangle. That doesn't make us old curmudgeons, that makes them some really big assholes.
Photo by rise888, from Seattlest's Flickr pool.
Comments [rss]
-
jonnyoctagon
-
guest
-
guest
-
kasa
-
guest
-
guest
-
Saxtor
-
opus
-
guest
