Lollapablahblah

Saturday, Nicole and I went to the White River Ampitheatre for the newly reincarnated Lollapalooza. Not a bad show, but I have to echo some complaints I've seen:

• No staggered seating, which creates horrible sightlines to the stage.
  
• Pretty abysmal sound (although if you wear earplugs, it's almost bearable)
  
• Uncomfortable seating. Take a cue from Safeco Field in Seattle, and aim for the seats they use.
  
• Long lines at the bathroom. In fact, so bad, we saw a line of guys pissing behind one of the restrooms.
  
• Who wants to go to a covered ampitheatre?? I mean, c'mon, that totally fucked the sound up.
  
• Not very diverse food choices. After waiting in line for ten minutes, a woman came out and informed everybody that this was the beer line. Oh great, thanks for putting up a sign!
  
• Pretty bad traffic before and after. When leaving the ampitheatre, we couldn't turn left (west) to get back to Seattle, so we had to drive east past the long line of cars and then turn around. It was pretty funny to see a Canadian getting handcuffed after failing a field sobriety test, though. I'm glad I didn't drink.
  
• It faces away from the sun, which is actually a disadvantage. Seeing a concert in front of a beautiful sunset was one of the nice things about going to the Gorge.
  
• No view! One of the things about the Gorge is kicking back on the lawn, sunning yourself and catching the view of the Columbia. But at White River, you get a little bit of Mt. Rainier through the Seattle haze, and that's it. Oh, there are some trees off in the distance. Woo.
  

Apart from that, the show was good. Audioslave rocked my ass off, and Jane's Addiction brought a little tear to me eye when they played Jane Says.

Oh, I don't know if this has anything to do with the urinators, but at about 9:30pm, we noticed the smell of manure wafting its way through the ampitheatre. Yeah, so the ampitheatre's out in the middle of farmland, but it was pretty foul.

White River's all shiny and new, and I'm sure there were some deals struck to get acts to come play there, but I'll stick to the Gorge for concerts, where possible. It's just a better venue.