Every summer I find myself asking some variation of the question, how is Nissan Pavilion allowed to exist?
As a venue, it’s great. Decent concessions (face it, any venue, anywhere, is overpriced, so that’s no different here), a giant, sprawling lawn that accommodates close to 15,000, and mammoth video screens that flank the stage.
But you would only know all of this if you actually got IN the venue, and therein lies the problem. Actually, the bigger problem is getting OUT.
For Saturday’s Dave Matthews show, my concert date and I left Richmond at 4:30 p.m. We made a brief stop at Baja Fresh in Fredericksburg (another superior chain that couldn’t survive in Richmond) and arrived at the road heading to the pavilion at 6:50 p.m.
That left an hour and 15 minutes to drive three miles.
Around 7:45 p.m., we finally hit the turn for the parking lot. Then we crawled along some more as we followed the trail of cars into a parking lot that I’m pretty sure was neighboring San Diego.
Once in the parking lot, the line of cars continued to crawl. And crawl. And turn. And crawl. And suddenly guess what? We had circled the entire lot and there were no spaces to be found.
So, after several minutes of cursing and panicking (it was now 8:05 p.m., BTW), I finally did what everyone else was doing and parked at some geometrically whacked angle on top of a bush. Yep, the TD-mobile possibly killed a giant hunk of foliage. And I’m truly very sorry about that.
After about a 3/4-mile hike to the venue – where we could now hear the band starting its first song (thankfully, the guys went on later than planned, around 8:20 p.m.) – we attempted to go through the entrance, which was a mass of clamoring, sweaty bodies. No real lines, just people all shoving to get to the security pat-down and turnstiles.
That’s pleasant in 90 degree-plus weather.
So, on with the show, which was quite good. You can read about it here: http://www.inrich.com/cva/ric/entertainment/music.apx.-content-articles-RTD-2008-06-29-0258.html
Then comes the trickiest part of any concert at Nissan Pavilion – the dismount.
We speed walked toward the exists with about 15,000 of the almost 25,000 in attendance, dodged the poky people strolling back to their cars with their lawn chairs strapped to their backs and their hands clasped as if they’ve never taken a step without being attached to the other person (note for another day – I hate those people), found the car and realized some other desperate concertgoer had parked his or her vehicle at an even more challenging angle…behind the TD-mobile.
With about three inches to spare before I stripped the paint off the trunk of this sedan (and thanks, concert date friend Heather, for expertly guiding me out of that precarious position), the car was out, we’re heading down the row toward one of many lines that eventually lead to freedom and…gridlock.
This wasn’t even let’s-inch-along-and-maybe-we’ll-get-out-eventually gridlock. This was, my husband called at 11 p.m. to see how we were, I yelled many four-letter words at him, he called back at 12:05 a.m. and we hadn’t moved. An inch. A centimeter. And the road rage dude stuck behind us kept intermittently honking his horn – even tapping out what sounded like Morse code at one point. Like THAT’s gonna help.
Anyway, long story longer…we were finally dislodged from this hellacious Zone of the Frozen Vehicles exactly two hours and four minutes later. I know, because believe me, we were keeping track, and when even the Saturday night ‘80s music on some radio station couldn’t keep us distracted, we knew our patience was flagging.
So tell me…what would have happened if my friend Heather had suddenly been stricken with some horrible illness? What if some pregnant woman (and actually, there were a ton at the concert) started having contractions? What if some nitwit tail-gaiting accidentally started a fire in the parking lot? Where were any of us going to go?
Absolutely nowhere. My friend would be dead, the pregnant woman would have delivered in a dirt parking lot and a fire would have charred everything in sight.
I don’t profess to have a solution to this insane traffic problem, because the way the venue is constructed, there is literally one main road coming from each direction that leads to the main exit. But how about having people direct outbound traffic at the end of each row to prevent the aggressive swarming that always occurs when people’s frustrations replace their decent manners? Might not solve the problem, but it certainly cannot make it any worse.
It’s sad, really, that what should be a fun evening out ends in such an exasperating manner. So now I’m back to my annual question: Why doesn’t the county do something about this?
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