{"id":680,"date":"2006-09-22T11:45:24","date_gmt":"2006-09-22T15:45:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/archives\/2006\/09\/22\/i-am-so-sick-of-hearing-about-the-rolling-stones\/"},"modified":"2006-09-22T11:48:24","modified_gmt":"2006-09-22T15:48:24","slug":"i-am-so-sick-of-hearing-about-the-rolling-stones","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/2006\/09\/22\/i-am-so-sick-of-hearing-about-the-rolling-stones\/","title":{"rendered":"I am so sick of hearing about the Rolling Stones."},"content":{"rendered":"

Yes. It’s true, that the Stones, and Alice Cooper, and Sloan, and Kanye West, are playing a big show<\/a> in Halifax tomorrow.<\/p>\n

Yes, it sometimes seems like this has been the only thing people have been talking about for weeks.<\/p>\n

Christ. Nothing says “small town” quite as loudly as getting just a little too excited that you’re a “just like a big town now”. <\/p>\n

The venue for the show is the Halifax Commons<\/a>, right in the middle of downtown. Apparently everyone is fine with there being an extra 60,000+ people dropped into the peninsula for one night. It will be madness.<\/p>\n

Look at this map:<\/p>\n

\"Halifx<\/p>\n

See where it says “Halifax North Common Park”. We’re going to put those 60,000+ people there.<\/p>\n

Please note that this is in the center of a highly urbanized peninsula–that many people arriving at once would be a problem in any urban area (witness “rush hour” in any decent sized city), but in something as highly constrained as a peninsula…. I expect the bridges and the three main arteries that take people in\/out of the peninsula from the west, to be clogged basically all day.<\/p>\n

You know what it means to me?<\/p>\n

1) Ridiculous construction downtown for a whole week while they build a stage and bleachers, etc. (You can see pictures of the day-by-day development<\/a> online.) As fascinating as this is from an engineering perspective, or when thinking about the logistics that must be involved in a Stone tour, it also means massive traffic delays and parking problems all week. All of this construction on the Commons involves closing roads around it–right in the place where all the downtown arteries come together.<\/p>\n

2) No going into town at all on Saturday. This wrecks my routine for the weekend, and also means I won’t be going to Drake’s (completely unrelated to the Stones) party Saturday night. He lives two blocks from where this concert will be happening, and I don’t think I would be capable of getting there even if I wanted to fight the crowds and traffic.<\/p>\n

3) Downtown will be a mess on Sunday. The park Sarah and I have been going to Sunday mornings is immediately adjacent to the Commons. I expect it will be a morass of refuse on Sunday morning.<\/p>\n

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve got nothing against the Rolling Stones. I mean, I’m not a big fan of their music or anything, but I actually am benevolently disposed towards them. Hell, ever since I picked up that coffee table book on people who have adapted their houses to hold massive book collections<\/a> and found Keith Richards’ house in there, I’ve been quite positive about them.<\/p>\n

That doesn’t change the fact, though, that I’m tired of hearing about this concert like it was the damned second coming, or that I’m really tired of my life being disrupted by it.<\/p>\n

Oh, and just in case that wasn’t enough, there’s also an NHL Exhibition game (Bruins\/Islanders)<\/a> at the Metro center that night. So there’s a few more thousand people10,000 if they sell it out–I haven’t heard, but wouldn’t be surprised.<\/footnote> essentially “right there”–the Metro Center is about a block away from the Commons.<\/p>\n

I’m actually happy to note that in the midst of this Sarah Harmer<\/a>‘s concert at the Cohn<\/a> is sold out that night. She should totally get a “I sold out against The Stones and the NHL” t-shirt or something. That’s another thousand people downtown, of course.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yes. It’s true, that the Stones, and Alice Cooper, and Sloan, and Kanye West, are playing a big show in Halifax tomorrow. Yes, it sometimes seems like this has been the only thing people have been talking about for weeks. Christ. Nothing says “small town” quite as loudly as getting just a little too excited that you’re a “just like… Read more →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-680","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music","xfolkentry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5UQvw-aY","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/680","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=680"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/680\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}