'HIP' FANS CREATE STINK AT MTS CENTRE

I got my first look at the new MTS Centre on Tuesday night and it
wasn't a pretty sight.

Not the arena itself.

I'm talking about what was going on inside while the Tragically Hip
rocked on.

But lest you think it's just me, and that I'm just some geezer who
should have stayed home -- actually on that we can agree -- and who
doesn't understand that pot-puffing, cocaine snorting, and beer
swilling 'n spilling is what rock concerts are supposed to be about...

Please read the following e-mail from a 26-year-old man who was
there.

* * * Last night my wife and I took in The Tragically Hip at the new
MTS Centre. We were greeted by OBO Security waving metal detecting
wands over our persons and City of Winnipeg police officers eyeing up
the throngs of people pushing through the doors. After taking a stroll
through the building to choose our meal and find our seats, we relaxed
and watched the "Phone Booth" fill with fans. The opening act was
enjoyable. The "Hip" were magnificent! The smell of marijuana and
sight of cocaine being snorted off of the small tables between seats
in section 225 was a horrible distraction from the show. I paid good
money for my wife and I to see the concert but to do so we had to
endure the acrid smell of "fun".

With all of the security, police, event staff, and everyone else there
for our safety, why is drug use so rampant and uncontrolled? How about
bringing a trained drug-sniffing dog to each of the entrances? Weed
out some of the bad stuff (pun intended) and discourage people from
bringing in the banned substances?

I like good clean fun and safe enjoyable venues. If people want to
blow smoke and deplete their brain cells, do it in their own space and
don't infringe on mine...

G. Katz

My sentiments precisely.

I was sitting in the first row of section 201, right beside the
entrance to the arena proper, or the concert bowl as it's called.

Five people directly below were openly passing a joint. Right at an
entrance, I remind you, where an usher or security person should have
been.

But rarely appeared.

And it wasn't an isolated event.

Jim Millican, True North's senior vice president, also took in the
show.

"Oh, man," he said later, "it was like a hydroponic convention in
there. There's no question about that." On top of that there was
cigarette smoke of the standard packaged variety.

And the apologetic, but obviously sloshed, young people -- The
Pleasantly Inebriated as it were -- who were standing behind us, were
dripping beer on us.

Later, as the band began their encore, I took a walk through the
concourse to see if they were still serving , or, as I suspected
overserving.

There I spotted a couple of lurching drunks.

And a burly young man in camouflage pants and matching toque leaning
over the bar, that still appeared to be open, saying something I
couldn't hear to the bartender.

"What are you looking at?" he said suddenly turning toward
me.

"You," I told him.

Whereupon we almost came to blows. As we sparred verbally, he took a
half-hearted swing at me, calling me foul names and critiquing my
attire. All fair comment. But when he suggested I looked like a "civil
servant" I'd had enough.

I handed him my business card.

Which only succeeded in giving him another foul name to call
me.

After he had wandered off, still shouting insults, I asked the
bartender what "The Camouflage Kid" had been asking her for before he
turned on me.

"A free shot," she said.

"He almost got one," I told her.

Later, my Free Press colleague, Bart Kives, clued me in on who I'd
just met.

"The Tragically Hip," Bart advised "is sort of paradoxical in that
they're a fairly intelligent rock band with a crowd that borders on
looganisim. There's a hoser element to their audience that makes going
to see them uncomfortable for the non-hosers"

Anyway, "The Camouflage Kid" was far from the only member of The
Unpleasantly Inebriated at the concert. Police reported arresting
seven inside the building Tuesday night and three more outside after
the concert finally ended and the paddywagon was waiting. Arena
security reportedly tossed 30 people from the crowd of 11,000.

I know what some of you are thinking. It's a rock concert. What do you
expect?

Well, I expected security to be enforcing the "no smoking" of any kind
in the building. I also expected the booze service to be cut off
earlier than 10:15 p.m.

Yesterday I called Kevin Donnelly, the MTS Centre's general
manager.

Donnelly said there was no way the security staff and police could
stop everyone who was smoking whatever they were smoking, and I told
him no one expects that.

But at least they have to be trying to catch who they can, and it
didn't appear to me they were trying very hard.

To my mind, Donnelly confirmed that when he said he witnessed someone
get tossed because he objected to having his pot taken away.

Not because he was caught smoking.

I told Donnelly I understood it was the first rock concert of its kind
in the new centre but I am concerned the crowd behaviour will get even
worse if his security people don't adopt a zero-tolerance policy and
actually begin enforcing it. "You know what," Donnelly said, "nothing
I saw last night surprised me. You know, you get a crowd that is
predetermined to come and behave in a certain way, consume a certain
quantity of beer. I think that what happened last night was probably
verbatim what happened the night before in Saskatoon and three nights
before in Edmonton and six nights before in Vancouver. Because I've
seen it probably 75 times myself with this band across the country
over the period of the last 15 years."

So, I suggested to Donnelly, what you're really saying is the crowd
expects to be able to behave in a certain way, and you're willing to
tolerate it.

To that Donnelly said this:

"Where it goes off the rails is where, as facility managers, you don't
match the expectations of the audience."

Well, they managed to match the expectations -- illegal as they were
- -- of lots of the audience.

But not mine and young Mr. Katz, the Free Press letter
writer.

"Was last night a resounding success from a facility?" Donnelly
continued, now interviewing himself.

"No... I think we could have done more proactively to curtail smoking
and pot smoking. And I'll bring it up, all those points, with my
managers and staff at upcoming meetings."

While he's at it, he should remind himself and his staff of something
else. What MTS Centre shouldn't be.

It shouldn't be the only place in Winnipeg where smoking is permitted.