You want a drink? Then suffer
You want a beer? Easy peasy. Go show your ID to that guy and get a blue band put around your wrist. Then head over to the beer ticket queue. Once you get to the front of that, you can purchase yourself a minimum $30 alcohol ticket which will allow you to buy a cold one.
Done that? Right. Move over to the queue to get into the designated drinking area. Once you're in there, you'll need to join another queue to buy a beer with your beer ticket. Then you can sit back, sip on your lager and enjoy your music festival. You deserve it.
Phew, drinking at concerts in New Zealand sure is a mission and the Laneways Festival in Auckland yesterday was no exception. Some people complained of hour-long waits to get through all that red tape, just to drink warm beer out of a plastic cup. Why do they make it so hard?
I don't want to pick on Laneways because it's their first year and organisers were obviously hamstrung by strict Auckland City Council bylaws in the central city. I know this because a festival promoter even came on stage to complain about them.
But if you've got more people sitting in the bar area - from which you can hear but can't see the artists you've paid to watch - than enjoying the music in front of the stage, you've got a problem.
Personally, I've given up drinking during concerts. It's just too hard, and it's not a problem unique to Laneways. The Big Day Out pens people in cages like sheep. Again, enjoying artists from between bars is pretty difficult.
Vector Arena is always riddled with queues for beer. A mate waited 20-odd minutes to pay $8 for a cup for Crown Lager during Them Crooked Vultures. And the queues at Pearl Jam late last year were around an hour long, only to close as soon as the band stepped on stage.
And there was the infamous Mercury Rising in Whitianga a few years back, which got it about as wrong as you could get it. It had the same system as Laneways, but ran out of beer and refused to refund people who had bought alcohol tickets.
We were left with about $90 worth. There goes private school for my first born.
Sorry to harp on about it, but Lollapalooza in Chicago last year got it right. You got your wrist tag after showing your ID at the front gate. That lasted three days, and you could buy Budweiser and wander anywhere around the venue with it.
There were no problems with drunkenness - I can't even remember seeing a security guard. People weren't lying in pools of their own vomit, like New Zealand festival organisers seem to think punters will do if they make it too easy to purchase alcohol.
I say, if people want to drink, let them. Trust them to behave themselves. If you treat people like monkeys, they'll act like apes. But if you treat them like adults, maybe - just maybe - they'll act like them.
What do you reckon?
» Follow NZStuffBlogs on Twitter and get fast updates on all Stuff's blogs.
» Fancy yourself as a blogger? Whoever wins Blog Idol 2 will blog on contract at Stuff as well as win a new Nokia phone. Put on your blogging hat and enter!
Sponsored links
Newest First
Oldest First
@ MsM - Agreed. It's a waste of time and money and if you're in the middle of an AC/DC crowd and drinking, it just increases the trips to the toilet, where other queues begin! In saying that, it's how they make most of their money! Plus, try explaining to 20,000 AC/DC fans they can't buy beer ... !
"There were no problems with drunkenness"
That's because they were drinking Budweiser.
straight up r18 smaller fests like this. no hassles with wristbands and "special" areas. you're in the venue, you're legal, plenty of beer tents, get on it. or yeah do it like lolla and just set the people free to roam with their tallboys. i too saw no issues, apart from 1 dude gettin arrested for jumpin in the fountain at the end of day 3. but that warning was clearly advertised.
All these over complicated and over strict rules do is make the people who will cause problems sneak in their own booze and get even more drunk and piss of those that just want to enjoy a few beers. It's lose/lose/lose for drunks/quiet drinkers/organisers. The only people who gain anything are the bureaucrats because they're being "seen to be doing somthing".
Thankfully Shihad and The Checks are adequate beer queue music for Thursday.
I'd like to agree with you Chris but a lot of New Zealanders are idiots when it comes to drinking. I'm guessing the drinking age in Chicago is 21 so that might have helped with Lollapalooza... and yeah - Don 1's suggestion makes sense too, haha.
I personally agree with MsM and Tony Who and don't really drink much/ anything at festivals because I like to be completely lucid to see my favourite bands! I think people I see at festivals who are throwing up drunk are such idiots - what a waste of time and money! They probably won't even remember any of it!
I tend to agree with you Chris. After being overseas and seeing how things are done in the UK and Europe I can't for the life of me understand why New Zealand has to be so uptight. At Glastonbury we were allowed to bring our own alcohol in as long as it wasn't "amounts considered beyond reasonable personal use" and people respected it. What a novelty (after being penned up at numerous BDO's in NZ and Australia) it was to be able to walk around with a drink in hand while watching my favourite bands. Maybe Festival Organisers in NZ should take a leaf out of Glasto's book.
I have been to concerts sober and I have been to concerts and have had a few drinks, and I can comfortably say they are almost invariably more enjoyable after a few drinks, anyone who suggests otherwise is kidding themselves (this means you MsM).
The big problem we seem to have is that a small but significant minority of people can't stop at a few drinks, so the more we can make these people look like idiots (live video on the big screen at Big Day Out!!), the more it will deter everyone else from doing the same.
m0rph3us - way to be narcissistic! Because you have had that experience, it must mean everyone else experiences things the same way, right?
Personally, if I'm going to a gig by a band I really like, I would prefer to be sober, coz I won't appreciate the music so much if I was drunk. If I'm going to see a DJ or something, I might have a few drinks.
I guess because of this, I never have really run int o the problems you're mentioning.
@Plastiquehomme: But of course! How did you know! Probably no more narcissistic than post #1 though ;)
Check out the last best links of the week
Let's make one last mixtape together
Check out the 10 best links of the week
Check out the 22 best links of the week
The best actors in the business
Check out the 10 best links of the week
Dubstep is taking over my life
Check out the 12 best links of the week
Wellington earthquake fear: No way in or out
Nightlife matriarch dies at show
Daily trivia quiz: February 17
Flights disrupted as severe thunderstorms hit Auckland
Cocaine-accused Kiwis in cruise clash
Urewera trial: Spent cartridges found near camps - police
MP's deep baritone brings down the house
Wellington earthquake fear: No way in or out
China 'will see Crafar ruling as racist'
Dazzling Adele silences critics
I'm no ticket scalper, says Mallard
Marryatt skips council debate to play golf
High cost of living mars return to NZ
Horsham Downs meditation pyramid planned
I'm more of the opinion that there shouldn't be alcohol at concerts, if you can't enjoy a band without imbibing then you've got a problem. While it's nice to think that we'd all be responsible given free-reign, the reality is NZers are totally different to Yanks and we have a serious problem when it comes to staying in control while on the turps.