An article from today’s Buffalo News regarding last night’s performance in Buffalo by the Dead commits a bunch of sins.
The Scott Street lot, near Michigan Avenue, was turned into a staging ground Tuesday for hundreds — perhaps thousands — of fans waiting to see a concert at HSBC Arena by The Dead, former members of the Grateful Dead minus the late Jerry Garcia.
Which is it? Hundreds? Thousands? A bunch? A few?
But the crowd of young jam-band enthusiasts and aging hippies — thought to be particularly environmentally conscious — left behind a parking lot strewn with beer and wine bottles, cans, bags, pizza boxes and hundreds of balloons used to get high with nitrous oxide.
Wow. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen more negative stereotyping and tut-tuting packed into a single sentence.
But after we’ve spent that long castigating Those Dirty Hippies, here comes the money quote:
Noticeably absent were any trash cans that could have given people a place to throw things away.
Huh. I wonder if that was a factor in all the garbage being tossed all over?
Nah, couldn’t be. Must’ve been the dirty hippies.
“I’m not sure I’ve ever seen more negative stereotyping and tut-tuting packed into a single sentence.”
Google “teabag”, you might find something there…
😉
Crowd numbers are always tricky. When I went to an anti-Fred Phelps rally in Albany, I physically counted 150 demonstrators. Yet the paper said 50. It is possible that the reporter had come very early or as it was winding down.
I also recall that the Parks Service in DC used to be in the crt=row=d counting business but apparently no more. During my antiwar days, we’d have a number of 750,000 and they would have 250,000. “Hundreds, maybe thousands” sounds abouty right to me, actually.