Spycouple Wrote:For the record...
Save On Foods Memorial Centre (i.e. "Gestapo Gardens") = WORST VENUE EVER!!!
Couldn't agree more. I missed recording an acoustic "Courage" on Friday night due to the gestapo. I leave via the front left exit (patrolled by about 6 guards) with my wife, we buy 5 beers (3 for us, two for our daughter and her boyfriend), try to re-enter the show at the front-left, which was very close to where we were sitting. We're told we have to go out, down to the back, and walk all the way up to near the front. But, when we're going past the beer lines, we're stopped and told each person is only allowed to buy 2 beers at a time, so we'd either have to dump a beer ($7.50), or go back to the same counter where we purchased it to get refunded. We flipped. I demanded a refund, and informed the lady that they might want to let staff know that if that's the rule, don't sell more than 2 beers to anyone! I let her know that I have just missed Courage because of her, and there is no f***ing way I am missing one more song. We go to re-enter, refund and two beers in hand, and need to produce our tickets again. Ah, my wife has left her ticket at her seat! She charges past two guards, gets grabbed and stopped. She turns to the guard with the look of absolute anger on her face and screams something irrelevant to the guard, the guard lets her go, and i produce my ticket and get back to discover I've missed the start of Thompson Girl.
When we first entered the center, my wife is asked what's in her water bottle, she lies and says 'water'. But being a savvy European who lived under communism for years, she goes out, trickles a bit of white wine out of the bottle, comes back to the guard and sticks it right up to his face and says, "there, it's empty now", and she gets in. Me and my daughter's boyfriend don't get scanned yet, because we learned there is no 're-entry' into the building once you leave. So we duck out for a quick cigarette. Another gestapo comes out saying there's no smoking on the property, you have to go down to the road. I say, "are you serious?" She was.
At intermission i approach a guard and ask "where's the smoking area"? He says there isn't a smoking area. I then show my disdain for the "no re-entry" rule, saying that if i paid $85 for a ticket, that entitles me to enter the establishment at any point in the evening to enjoy what I've paid for. He spews on about no re-entry and I laugh, saying that re-entry sounds very very serious, like are you Neil Armstrong approaching the Earth's atmosphere in your space shuttle? He says 'very funny' and storms away.
So as I'm walking back to my seat a commotion starts in the upper-left area, with a woman dancing topless. She's wrestled to the ground by several guards, and soon there's cops pushing me out of the way, spilling my beer, trying to get up there to help remove the offender. By the time they reach her, the security guards have already kicked her, smashed her face into the concrete steps, and have both her arms wrenched behind her back. The crowd boos. It was completely unnecessary the way she was treated.
I saw The Hip at the Commodore in Vancouver at the start of their World Container tour. That's the place to see a show! 900 people max, tubs of cold beer everywhere, burning embers ignored, and great sound.
I will NEVER EVER return to the SOFA for a show.
But thanks for grabbing the rest of the show... can't wait to hear it.
![[Image: bill_murray_caddyshack.jpg]](http://staging.radaronline.com/exclusives//bill_murray_caddyshack.jpg)
...which is nice.
