Two years running now large pop-country concerts have brought tens of thousands of people from the surrounding countryside to the pleasant little city of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (this year Luke Bryan, last year Kenny Chesney)
Two years running now these crowds of suburban and rural concert goers have brought unprecedented amounts of self-entitlement, mayhem, and especially trash (on top of the to-be-expected traffic) to Pittsburgh's north shore surrounding Heinz Field and the Allegheny River.
This year the outrage over the trashing and general disrespect of the city by touring concert-goers has even incited a response from Pittsburgh's mayor.
"Pittsburgh Police issued 37 non-traffic citations (20 for scalping; 10 for public urination; 6 for disorderly conduct; and one for public intoxication); made at least seven arrests; broke up 15 fights and answered 154 calls to 911. City medics responded to 100 calls to 911 and made 34 transports to hospitals.
Public Works cleaned the area through the day starting at 11 a.m. yesterday and had an overnight crew emptying garbage cans, and flushing and sweeping streets. Sunday morning it was still picking up garbage from boaters along the Allegheny River."
full statement:
http://pittsburghpa.gov/mayor/release?id=3212Sadly, this year was not-so-quite-as-bad as last year only due to tailgaters being issued trash bags when entering parking lots- which most of them, it seems, still didn't use, and the posting of extra police and emergency personnel. The fact that a music/culture that that esteems itself so much on being self-reliant and self-respectful, not needing other people to hold their hands and pick up the mess they made, is in fact the epitome of a disgusting, orgy-of-irresponsibility and child-like behavior, is- while not particularly surprising- pretty much as frustrating as it is hilariously hypocritical.
And while there's been a lot of bashing of country music/its fans and the suburban and rural populations of the "Pennsyltucky" area, and while this reaction is somewhat deserved, there's, I think, a deeper issue at root here, between cultural differences and just a misunderstanding of what it's like to live in a city by people who've evidently never done so.
First it should really be considered how much effort must go into keeping a city clean, despite the popular attitude that they're dirty places. While throwing an empty bottle of Fireball and a bunch of Miller Lite cans into the woods behind your house after a rowdy evening may be acceptable behavior when there's a mile of wilderness between you and your neighbor, when you can't walk five feet without running into someone this is unacceptable. Things need to be thrown away. Everything. If 25,000 out of 250,000 people don't follow this idea, a city looks like a literal dump. When 25,000 people out of 50,000 people don't follow this idea, the area looks like a post-apocalyptic wasteland (reverse-image-searching aftermath pictures of the Luke Bryan concert turns up pictures of slums in third world countries)
Second, a city is a place where people live. It's not a tourist attraction and it's not an amusement park. People are trying to get places, whether that be home, work, or wherever, and they're trying to live their life in as pleasant a way as possible. While it may seem fine to you to throw your trash everywhere, to break things, to be thoughtlessly irresponsible in a way that puts undue strain on the city's emergency personnel (who you aren't paying for), it's just really not. And even though you won't have to think about it anymore once you're drunk on the highway home, the hundreds of thousands of people whose collective doorstep you just destroyed do, both financially and by the fact that no one wants to live in a dump- and no one should have to.
Please remember that when you visit a city, you are a guest of hosts, of which most are involuntary. What it all comes down to is this: please be respectful. You wouldn't want 50,000 people coming to your neighborhood park or your property or field or whatever and leaving you with days of thankless cleanup.
