Same folks up front

lastexitlondon

Micheyb21 said:

lastexitlondon said:

Go Animal said:

Side note: there sure is a whole bunch of trash left behind after every single GA line.

Sometimes it's just a little, sometimes it's a LOT. And untold plastic bottles mixed in with trash. More coffee cups & to-go boxes than you can shake a stick at.

On top of abandoned air mattresses, coolers, foldable chairs, and other ephemeral items.

Wonder how the band would feel if they saw it first hand at around 6pm every day of show?? 🤔 

The queues I've been in have been tidy. People make a point of collecting debris and put it in the bin. I've not seen mess. But that's my view at Europe shows

Manchester in the summer was awful - just stuff left everywhere as we went in and im fairly sure I remember outside Ziggo in previous years the same. Its definitely become a problem from what ive seen. 

I was in the first 50 at Manchester and that's at all what I saw. The staff were going round with big bags for us to put rubbish in. 

battle1

lastexitlondon said:

Micheyb21 said:

lastexitlondon said:

Go Animal said:

Side note: there sure is a whole bunch of trash left behind after every single GA line.

Sometimes it's just a little, sometimes it's a LOT. And untold plastic bottles mixed in with trash. More coffee cups & to-go boxes than you can shake a stick at.

On top of abandoned air mattresses, coolers, foldable chairs, and other ephemeral items.

Wonder how the band would feel if they saw it first hand at around 6pm every day of show?? 🤔 

The queues I've been in have been tidy. People make a point of collecting debris and put it in the bin. I've not seen mess. But that's my view at Europe shows

Manchester in the summer was awful - just stuff left everywhere as we went in and im fairly sure I remember outside Ziggo in previous years the same. Its definitely become a problem from what ive seen. 

I was in the first 50 at Manchester and that's at all what I saw. The staff were going round with big bags for us to put rubbish in. 

Sounds like rubbish to me. 

smdevine

Go Animal said:

Also, whoever was making Swiftie style friendship bracelets at various shows last year? Bless your heart. Another bright spot.

With Ed & Jill at the Eras tour closer yesterday, the space between PJ and TS fandoms on a venn diagram becomes slimmer by the day 🫶

Absolutely my pleasure.♥️

gndcd402

darwinstheory said:

Gibson said:

The only thing that bugs me are the people that hop back and forth between the GA and merch lines.  When merch opens they grab what they need and then hop right back into their GA spot. Maybe I'm old fashioned, but I think you should only have squatters rights to one line at a time.

This 100% happens!

How else are they supposed to fund their tour besides flipping ALL the limited merch on Facebook?  The admins of PJBay buy multiples of the limited edition merch and flip it there. 

Go Animal

smdevine said:

Go Animal said:

Also, whoever was making Swiftie style friendship bracelets at various shows last year? Bless your heart. Another bright spot.

With Ed & Jill at the Eras tour closer yesterday, the space between PJ and TS fandoms on a venn diagram becomes slimmer by the day 🫶

Absolutely my pleasure.♥️

They're rad! 🎤

smdevine

lastexitlondon said:

mcgruff10 said:

Agreed bud.  Halts maul!

Take your waste elsewhere.

PAPPNASE!!

mookeywrench

It's getting called a culture and big kumbaya friendship, but from what I've read on both sides my verdict is it's really just one big alliance to game the system and look out for themselves.

If thats your prerogative go for it, but call a spade a spade.

lastexitlondon

Go build your sand karsten

lastexitlondon

battle1 said:

lastexitlondon said:

Micheyb21 said:

lastexitlondon said:

Go Animal said:

Side note: there sure is a whole bunch of trash left behind after every single GA line.

Sometimes it's just a little, sometimes it's a LOT. And untold plastic bottles mixed in with trash. More coffee cups & to-go boxes than you can shake a stick at.

On top of abandoned air mattresses, coolers, foldable chairs, and other ephemeral items.

Wonder how the band would feel if they saw it first hand at around 6pm every day of show?? 🤔 

The queues I've been in have been tidy. People make a point of collecting debris and put it in the bin. I've not seen mess. But that's my view at Europe shows

Manchester in the summer was awful - just stuff left everywhere as we went in and im fairly sure I remember outside Ziggo in previous years the same. Its definitely become a problem from what ive seen. 

I was in the first 50 at Manchester and that's at all what I saw. The staff were going round with big bags for us to put rubbish in. 

Sounds like rubbish to me. 

Thanks for your opinion on my eyes 

brianlux

BigRedd said:

It is not normal or healthy behaviour at all. They do it so they can get that one special moment from Eddie. It's so crazy to watch them fight for his attention.

Also we have grown adults leaving shows early so they can sleep on a curb for two more nights. I have seen people running in airports trying to get ahead of other people catching a cab to the venue. Its absolute bonkers. 

Do away with this set up that feeds these peoples toxic behaviour. 

Ed seems to love it though and feeds into the craziness 

Ugh!  Sounds horrid.  Give me a lower balcony seat in a good venue with well honed acoustics any day.

jpgoegel

WindowPaine said:

jpgoegel said:

Go Animal said:

My favorite bit is when they squeeze through, calling for their "friend" lol. Happened at Ohana with spectacular results😂

STAAAACYYYYY!🤣

Me and 2 other guys started calling for "Stacy" to come meet them, but to no avail. They mysteriously gave up on "Stacy" without a HINT of urgency. They just stood next to us for the remainder of the set.

I guess they weren't that close with "Stacy" 😉

Whenver I hear of Stacy, always steers me to this.  Maybe it was Brian Fallon in disguise

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jf4qiIs2AU

haha yes! me too. this song was in daily rotation 5yrs ago. when my daughter was an infant, she would pretty much only fall asleep if this song was on. she still sings: "stacy! i want to take you to the movies.." all the time

that whole video has an interesting story.   members of the TGA/BFallon fan club were sent an email asking fans to send in pictures of themselves dressed up in their best mod outfit.   from there, people were chosen to attend and be the whole audience in the video.  they were sent the song a few days in advance to learn the lyrics.   pretty cool stuff that everyone in that video is a fan, minus the band members obviously.

imagine the chaos if PJ did that 

steven87

jasonw said:

Raleigh 1 will be my first time in the pit after 25 years of reserved seating for PJ, if I just come when doors open how far back do you think I’ll be? 

It’s honestly surprising how close you can get entering at doors. Even in the pit, a lot of people don’t first enter until the opening act is on or even shortly before PJ takes the stage. It varies somewhat from show to show, but I’d estimate that if you enter at doors, you’ll probably be about 4-5 heads back on stone’s side, and about double that in the middle or on mike’s side. Regardless you’re going to have a very good spot and will be closer to the stage than at least 95% of the people there. Enjoy your first GA experience!

jasonw

steven87 said:

jasonw said:

Raleigh 1 will be my first time in the pit after 25 years of reserved seating for PJ, if I just come when doors open how far back do you think I’ll be? 

It’s honestly surprising how close you can get entering at doors. Even in the pit, a lot of people don’t first enter until the opening act is on or even shortly before PJ takes the stage. It varies somewhat from show to show, but I’d estimate that if you enter at doors, you’ll probably be about 4-5 heads back on stone’s side, and about double that in the middle or on mike’s side. Regardless you’re going to have a very good spot and will be closer to the stage than at least 95% of the people there. Enjoy your first GA experience!

Thanks so much! 

spankyMP

You don't need to camp out, but it certainly helps to guarantee your spot, especially at a big venue. Charlottesville 2013. Tailgated a little. Went to the GA entrance just after doors had opened. Went to the bathroom, grabbed some merch, grabbed some food and beer, and strolled down to be second off the rail in front of Stone.  It was a small venue and the pit was only about half full all night. The next night in Charlotte I sat behind the pit and not only was it huge, but it was packed all the way to the back.

Got video of Ed's stage dive fake and Mike's Alive solo. Sorry for the photo quality, I screenshotted from the videos.

I did the same thing at Austin 1 last year and was 5 deep on Mike's side.

BSully

Wow... just spent way too much time reading this thread. Didn't know it was such a hot topic.

I've only had the pleasure of GA 1 time in my 13 shows. St. Louis in 22. It was an amazing time and I didn't spend all day in line. I did spend more time than I'm used to, but I ended up being about 5 or 6 people deep in the dead center and got to witness a phenomenal show!

Chrrie

baldog27 said:

This is the way.  There is no substitute. https://www.phishfirstentry.com/ Online lotto open 2 days prior to show, find out the day before if you won (around 200 winners), queue starts 2 hours before doors on show day, ID check, plus one (optional), also ID check for plus one - find out the day before. It would take PJ 2-3 employees to accomplish this per show. Camping for two nights is certifiable when the point (IMHO) of touring around with your friends is to see the world not hang out on a sidewalk.  To a larger point it would also allow a lot of people up front who would not normally get that opportunity for a lot of (work/life) reason's that keep them from the queue. 

Very familiar with this process as it's the same one DMB uses, also run by First Entry.

My main counter is that there are infuriating aspects of this system that you can't do anything about. If you win the lottery and have a pair of tickets you can bring a +1. Obviously many times groups of friends go to the show together, or families, so you've got large portions of the rail and the second row that are saved by lotto winners to keep groups together. Is it fair for a group to be split up? The answer is probably subjective but I'm sure it doesn't feel good for the other people who won and may never again. No one usually says anything because most people don't want to be confrontational, and when you didn't have to put in 12+ hours waiting in line there's less drive to ruffle feathers. And this isn't like a rail mafia controlling everything, although there is one that follows DMB around and they did figure out how to increase their chances of winning, it happens every show with different people either innocently (a family wants to get their kids on the rail for example) to those who feel like because they won, it extends to everyone they're there with.

Anyway, I love DMB and I would love to experience being center rail now that I'm in the part of my life where I could put in the time. I have come to the realization that I most likely won't, ever. You need to win the tickets in the fan club lottery, then you need to win the early entry lottery, and then you need to get assigned a very low number. There's no exception made because it's your hometown show, or it's your birthday, or 50th show, or whatever special occasion that some people who don't normally camp choose to for a particular show. The lottery created different problems and the DMB community has it's own group of angry/annoyed fans who don't like what it turned into. First come first serve is on paper "fair", but now it's polarizing because there's people who are willing to wait a lot longer than the vast majority of GA ticket holders can or want to. If someone's main argument is that official rules aren't being followed, I've gotten emails that said GA was "allowed" to line up at 4pm the day of the show and when noon rolls around there's already 50, and 100 by 4pm. How many hours before the email states does it become acceptable to line up and if the answer is more than 0 then why are we so offended by 10-20 people who do 24+?

Idk, the whole lottery thing, you might never win it and you'll still never be front and center. So it's like getting into the territory of wanting to personally give up the ability to participate if you want to just so those people can't have it anymore. If the band decided of their own volition to change the system fine I accept that, but if the 10c implemented a lottery because of this perception that the whole thing is fixed that would be devastating to me.

Let's be clear that the people mentioned in the original post don't comprise the entire rail. They're not taking away the ability to get it even if you don't want to sleep there overnight. The "big dude" referenced purposefully doesn't always do GA despite loving it because he's aware it's hard to see around him, and only took center this year when it was his 250th show.