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12:07 pm
October 30, 2013
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After reading J-Webb’s quip about “The Line” in the most recent Hatchet Herald, I feel the need to get a rant out about it…
This is what he had to say about it:
“OK, I know a lot of y’all were tripping at how long and messy the line to the ticket booth was. WE DIDN’T LIKE IT EITHER! Next year, we’re hoping to have two separate box office trailers going to ensure that ninjas can get in faster. I think we’d all agree though—once you got inside the grounds, the wait had been worth it, right? Next year we shouldn’t have that issue.”
While I can appreciate that they recognize that it was a “problem”, what bugs the shit out of me about that statement is that it completely negates how COMPLETELY fucking irresponsible and DANGEROUS the handling of that line was!
I (and the people around me) seemed to have been at the top of the curve on how long it took (approximately 7-8hrs). I have never in my fuckin’ life waited that long for anything!!! EVER!!! I had my tickets that I had bought MONTHS prior in my hand and yet had to wait that long just to get a fuckin’ bracelet, charm and program.
When we got into line it was in the AM. No one anticipated that as the day grew longer that the sun would get higher in the sky and that the shade that was available to those at the front would NOT be there by the time they got to where it once was. How were any of us to know that we would have needed sunscreen, a chair, an umbrella and water? None. There was NO WAY for anyone getting into that line to have known that shit was SOOOOO fucked. And we all paid the price for it. Sure we can laugh about it now and point out all the sunburned tan lines, but there were pregnant women and people in wheelchairs and on crutches in that line SUFFERING. They did nothing. Not a fuckin’ thing. At first some ninjas were turning a profit selling water for a dollar but then the Scrub Care Unit began walking the line and tossing water bottles to anyone that needed them. Did the event organizers see the problem and offer any kind of shade or water options? NO. No misters, no tenting, no reshaping of the line so as to put more people into possible shade… nothing.
So to read J-Webb summing up people’s “frustration” with the line as “tripping at how long and messy the line to the ticket booth was” is just complete and unapologetic IGNORANCE of what it was like to have been in that line.
With no melodrama added, that line ruined pretty much my entire Gathering experience this year. People were in PAIN. People were INJURED. In my section, there were at least THREE people that had to be carted out by the medics for heat exhaustion/heat stroke! And they did NOTHING.
Even after getting my tickets and finding out about how anyone with a car pass was gonna get fucked out of their sites (cuz it was either get a campsite you wanted or throw $100+$10 out the window for the privilege of taking your car) despite continuing to sell car passes to people knowing they wouldn’t be able to use them; I didn’t get my site set up until the mainstage acts were going on and even THEN I was so burnt and in pain that I was all but trapped until the sun went down and the temperature with it. I was burnt to the degree that ANY contact with sunlight HURT and my skin was radiating its own heat so even in the shade, I was on fire. And that was every day. I had been there since the DAY BEFORE and yet somehow got fucked into the JCW camping area where there is NO shade and the sun is ALL DAY on your ass!
So I spent pretty much every day of the Gathering, hiding in shadows (unless there was something I absolutely couldn’t miss). I couldn’t go out and find my FLH crew, I couldn’t go hang out with the crowds or witness any of the shit during the day really… BECAUSE of that fuckin’ line and what it did to my body and my frame of mind.
“ Tripping at how long and messy the line to the ticket booth was” ??? No, everyone was tripping about how much of a fuckin’ PUNISHMENT it seemed we were putting ourselves through in order to get something that was SOOO fuckin’ easy to have resolved with a few divisions of the line ie People WITH tickets, People BUYING tickets and People with Ballas Passes.
Like I’ve said, there were good times to be had and I got mine! but considering how things were last year and how much I MISSED as a result of this year (which btw, I got to the Gathering at 3pm the day OF last year and only stood in a line for like 20min so SOMEthing new was FUCKED and I’m betting it was all the attention that was paid to the Ballas seeing as there were HUGE swaths of land that could have been camped had it not been for them doing what they did this year) I’m just not accepting “how messy the line was” as a valid response to what we ALL went through.
People in the line were beginning to “joke” about what Psychopathic would do if people started claiming they got melanoma ‘er some shit as a result of being there… but I gotta say that I’m really proud of all the Juggalos that no matter how pissed off and heat exhausted we all got, no one acted out or got violent (even though we were all hatching plans to tip over the trailer and make a run for it).
Never again.
Fuck that line.
‘~’=
"Your lack of online social presence makes it difficult for me to predict your needs..." - 2064: Read Only Memories
12:55 pm
April 2, 2013
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I did it the night before and man am I glad i did, my bro and mom had to wait in the line during the day (you might remember her giving out water and ice). They both were burned and pissed by the time they got in. Even the night before it took me 6 hours to just exchange my ticket. People were getting very nasty with the staff, which i’m sure mad them take their damn time, i tried to tell people getting pissed at the staff wasn’t going to fix anything. The barricades being sideways was literally the stupidest and most dangerous thing they could do.. Why they didn’t have two trailers is beyond me, maybe instead of a new second stage they could’ve got another ticket office.
youtube.com/c/bostinmckickass
1:51 pm
August 27, 2012
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I hate to rub it in but Thanks to @celle2057 and Mary and the power of smoking/attempting to help with a Morton’s list quest our wait was only a ginger 2 hours which at the time we thought was OUTRAGEOUS. The line was the parking lot party in a way this year we sat in our chairs and smoked and drank all night with some of our homies in line all nite…
"Somewhere theres a Waffle House thats severely understaffed right now" -OCJ to Scruffy watching a second stage act at the Gathering.
2:24 pm
August 15, 2012
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I was lucky to be one of the people who got in day before because my homie bought a ballas sight. Our wait was about an hour. I saw everyone in that horrible disaster of a line.
All the planning that goes into this.
All the money. Shit we all got charged $5 for every ticket and pass we bought for the shipping. 5 tickets? $25 dollar shipping and it all comes in same little brown envelope. Knowing damn well it cost a buck to ship all 5 tickets. So we had what? 6000 ninjas this year? Maybe less. Who knows? Thats about $30,000 they could have spent to have more booths, have shelter for the line. have more gates up to manipulate the line, to have security helping to move the line in a orderly way. Shit, all that money they could have had water available without the super fresh ninjas that are the SCU.
I give mad props to Jumpsteady though. I had a few issues and he personally dropped everything he was doing to help me out.
Also props to them folks over at the Shell station. they kept the bathrooms open all week. Stocked a shitload of Faygo. They were always nothing but super friendly full of smiles the whole time. Over at the BP, which I only went to once, they acted like we were there as a burden to them. Very unfriendly crew there.
2:46 pm
Moderators
April 1, 2012
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Why not just get your tickets online? Or did ya’all need to get the booklet and charm that came with it all? Standing in line for 6hrs sounds like bullshit. I remember last year not being so bad, I may have waited over an hour to get tickets.
2:55 pm
August 15, 2012
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You had to get the Charm and wristband from the booth.
At Hogrock we simply got the “goodie bag” as we were walking in. Simple
2:57 pm
May 29, 2013
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Shoulda packed a straw so you could suck it the fuck up.
Blood rains down from an angry sky! My cock rages on! My cock rages on!
3:07 pm
July 15, 2013
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FUCK THAT LINE…i got in it the night before, word was only ballas could line up and get their shit cause they was going to start letting them in soon, so we waited to get in line till we heard regulars could get their tickets…that was 9:30pm…the line was only half of what i seen of the daytime pictures….but the end had two lines, that broke of into 4 lines after you got around the bend…which “merged” into one line squeezing through a metal barricade rail/maze opening…they had ONE (1) fat chick handling Regular tickets, one chick at a very short willcall/guest line, and another hobbling around the trailer on a crutch, and the chick on the crutch running back and forth showed more motivation than anyone else in that trailer…when i got close to the front Jumpsteady showed up , poked around, said some shit to J-webb, and left…so J-webb takes over the Willcall window which was getting VERY little traffic, instead of releaving the fat chick who had been there for hours, cutting bracelets and handing amulets out in slow motion….and then he busts out in song lyrics and chanting holding up the process even longer like it would help the growing aggression…by that time me and a few others hopped the rail and moved 2 of the barricades to the side so there was a bigger merge lane….at 5:30am i got my book , car pass and Amulet…..2 hours later i was through the gates and setting up camp, and then a long nap, after a merch run…..FUCK THAT LINE
….as bad as my shit was..(really anoing drunk lette yelling stupid shit at the top of her lungs for hours)….im glad i didnt have to do that in the sun.
3:22 pm
Moderators
May 22, 2012
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everbody gotta wait in the line. dont matter if you had a ticket already or not.
Cheshyr said
No one anticipated that as the day grew longer that the sun would get higher in the sky
no one…?
kinda basic.
not defendin the line bullshit at all, of course. as brendan already pointed out, we got through the line in two, two and a half hours. tops.
thats not so much a result of tactics; they were just able to get people through the line faster at the beginning, for whatever reason.
after we got our shit, we did just post up next to the line. and watched it grind to a crawl right before our eyes. ninjas were taking twice as long to move half as far. okay, there were only two windows open, but there were only two open when we went through.
what bugs me about it most, is that the whole thing got significantly slower, when they had already proven they were capable of holding the wait down to two three hours. even without tactics, it shoulda been less than four, at the rate they started at.
its like someone came to the booth and said, ‘youre rushing things, need to be more meticulous.’
really, the line shoulda sped up slightly; j-webb was using an awful lot of time just chatting and yellin chants at juggalos [nice to be cool with us and all, but wed rather be able to get our shit]. and there were plenty of moments when there was only one person at the window. once things were stackin up, youd think theyd be ready to knuckle down and bust it out, not get slower. ya know, considering the casual pace they began with.
awfully paranoid, arent you?
5:40 pm
October 30, 2013
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@ltb Hardy-har-har. I’ll be the first to say that it wasn’t AFGANISTAN ‘er some shit but YOU have been trained and are getting PAID to have to endure such things. All props to you on that tip. You could get sent to HELL itself but that line was only a few Circles removed from it.
Sounds like the majority of you managed to luck out pretty well. Of course it would have helped if I could have FOUND YOU when I got there! Where the hell was the RV?! No banner, no nuthin’. And I walked around that side in circles! Which is peobably also why I had no idea that the regular ticket holders could get their stuff around 9:30p as I was parked on the OTHER side of the road and the word around there into the night was that they were only doing Ballas. Like, no one was walking by with their braclets so…
By the time my grouping rounded the poison ivy (or some other harmful plant shit) covered fence corner at around NOON, they (or someone) had removed the rail maze and the “line” had bloated to be about 10 people across with everyone smooshed up against each other; not including all the random shit people were carrying with them like cooler, some chairs, etc.
Later, they DID open a third window and had Natalie The Ring Girl in a Crew polo working. It helped but not by much. They also began stopping people from going to the right after getting their stuff, so everyone that was exiting had to push against the crowd to get out. Even though I didn’t eyeball anyone myself, I can tell you that the looks you got leaving the line must be the same expression people getting let out of jail get from the other inmates… Spooky shit.
Another unapparent issue was that INSIDE the trailers, the individual items were separated from each other. So the charms were not near the programs and those were not near the bracelets and none of them were near the credit card machine (yes, they were taking credit cards and needing people to sign shit the entire time as well).
As far as people getting mad at the staff, all I have to say is SEVEN HOURS. Seven FUCKING hours. At what point as an employee do YOU, as a thinking human being, begin to realize that additional measure need to be taken and ACT upon them? Whether that means speeding up your method or making attempts to streamline the process, what have you… we’re talking about a situation that caused casualties (and I consider being dragged out and put into a MediVan, “casualties”) and these goofballs can’t think of taking another table outside and dealing with those that HAD tickets leaving three windows open to deal with the rest?! I didn’t hear anything about there being a lack or rented technology (ie card scanners or whatever they were using to verify the tickets) so… But at some point venting is due and if no one takes the initiative to take care of a situation, who you gonna yell at?
SEVEN. HOURS.
[EDIT]
Using Google Earth’s path ruler, and always rounding DOWN (for optimism’s sake); it took seven hours to move roughly 750ft. That’s 107ft an hour or 1.7ft(rounded) a minute. Try that at home, kids!
"Your lack of online social presence makes it difficult for me to predict your needs..." - 2064: Read Only Memories
6:59 pm
April 23, 2012
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I waited for about 7 and applied sunscreen and wore a hat. The way anyone standing in the sun for a prolonged period of time should do. I suffered no discomfort (aside from the discomfort of standing 7 hours, of course).
7:11 pm
August 8, 2012
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i wonder if the cops used live google earth to monitor the gathering this year ..I heard they’re using that a lot more
7:15 pm
August 27, 2012
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MitchellKing said
I waited for about 7 and applied sunscreen and wore a hat. The way anyone standing in the sun for a prolonged period of time should do. I suffered no discomfort (aside from the discomfort of standing 7 hours, of course).
Mitchell is the motherfucking man. Remember to always bring sunscreen and a hat when you are standing in hell…Oh yeah don’t forget to bring a towel.
Edit: Glo and I laughed our asses off as we read that in your voice. You’ve got a grip on shit that is totally unique and fucking awesome. Im glad you found our camp.
"Somewhere theres a Waffle House thats severely understaffed right now" -OCJ to Scruffy watching a second stage act at the Gathering.
7:27 pm
September 18, 2012
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Having to wait a full time job to get in is bullshit.
8:58 pm
January 19, 2013
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The lesson to be learned from all of this is if you want to fiend over being there early and getting a good camping spot- then spend the extra cheddar to be a Big Balla.
Otherwise go there on Wednesday night to avoid the huge line.
Kinda like going to a baseball game an inning late to avoid the crowd (which I do all the time for Blue Jays games).
That being said, if I was stuck in a line all day with Juggalos I’d probably just slam beer the whole time to get extra buzzed for the nights’ activities.
If @cheshyr diidn’t have a cooler with some ice and cold drinks on him before he lined up, then he fucked up. He could have used the cooler as a seat the whole time. Ninjas do it every year!
9:05 pm
August 2, 2015
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Just to throw my experience out there….this is my 11th gathering, just so you know where this opinion is coming from, I met my wife at a gathering and we have been married 10 years this year. The gathering and juggalos are not just a fun little escape for me….this is why I have the life, friends, and family that I have. We have had to miss the last 2 years because life is not always butterflies and rainbows for juggalos, but we got our lives together and were ready for our family reunion/anniversary/vacation this year, so we thought. We had money so we bought tickets online (you know so you don’t have to stand in a huge line or anything stupid) ahead of time, got the camping equipment we needed, bought a reliable car….we were ready! Then we stood in line for 7 1/2 8 hrs. When we got the window we made a comment to the staff, trying to be nice, about how stressful it must be for them in there. The reply I got was “Stressful? Huh…we can go as slow or as fast as we want. HaHa.” Wow. By the time I set up our shelter I was already burnt, beyond anything I had endured before. I survived day one hiding in the shade til the sun went down, then I had enough energy to walk one time in a circle around the grounds. The next morning I woke up feeling beat down, the heat radiating from my skin was crazy! Now I am not much of a party guy any more, but at the gathering I usually get a little crazy…not this year. I did not have so much as a single beer. I felt like crap the whole time I was there. The second morning I woke up and had stopped sweating so we decided to leave on our own accord before I was carted out by the medics. This is the FIRST time I have ever even thought about leaving the gathering early! I missed all the seminars! I didn’t even get to see the wrestling area! I missed Twiztid! I missed ICP! All because of what seems to be incompetence or lack of care for the people attending the gathering this year. I am very sad to say I will not be back. If this is how we are treated now at our own family reunion…wtf?
p.s. The thing that really kind of bugged me is nobody seemed to care, even when I was getting ready to leave and we were telling the info tent what was going on, nobody cared until they found out how long I had been a juggalo. Then they took notes and wrote stuff down “oh you’re an old school juggalo…we should make a note of this…” and they made sure to get me a golfcart to get my stuff to the car then. The point is….it shouldn’t matter how long you have been down, if you are at a juggalo event and having a medical issue the staff, hell even more so, the JUGGALOS should be trying their best to help you.
I love you all! MCL
9:08 pm
August 27, 2012
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Miklo Velka said
If @cheshyr diidn’t have a cooler with some ice and cold drinks on him before he lined up, then he fucked up. He could have used the cooler as a seat the whole time. Ninjas do it every year!
Ninjas in line were also pretty chill about giving their seats up if someone needed to sit down when I was there but it was the beginning night…I gave mine up several times even when I was just line spectating…Using a cooler as a seat is as gathering as gathering gets…form/function hell even sometimes theres a cup holder built in there…
"Somewhere theres a Waffle House thats severely understaffed right now" -OCJ to Scruffy watching a second stage act at the Gathering.
9:13 pm
January 19, 2013
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I appreciate you sharing the story Cue Gee, that truly sucks.
I think it’s clear Psychopathic wants ninjas like yourself who don’t want to deal with being in line for hours, to spend a few extra bucks and buy a Big Ballas.
9:20 pm
August 27, 2012
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Not tryna start an argument here but didn’t Big Balla’s sell out pretty fast…its not a cure all there were only so many spots and they sold out pretty quick.
"Somewhere theres a Waffle House thats severely understaffed right now" -OCJ to Scruffy watching a second stage act at the Gathering.
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