> I dunno, yer right I've never been on the receiving end
> of teargas, can anyone on the list describe it ? I mean,
Personally I've also been spared of this joyful experience (tho once it
was a pretty close shave), but one of my comrades (a security guard at
the time) told that when he accidentally ran across a cloud of tear gas
he himself had just sprayed, it felt like somebody had just thrown
boiling grease at his face and he was blinded for couple of minutes. And
that it was not until several hours later that the pain had fully
subsided. That was something of middle-grade stuff (somewhere between
riot control and military-grade) tho.
One more nasty thing about the gas is that when you try to wash it away
(with water, that is), the pain only gets worse. So if you don't know
that, you're in a nasty situation. My pal here got help from his trusty
ol' pardner and got carried to the hospital immediately, but I'd rather
imagine that would not be the case with 10,000+ temporarily blinded
piss-drunk punk rockers.. =/
That crowd pressure thing is really horrible even when it does not lead
to such tragic events. Back in '95-96 or so, I was at the Prodigy gig in
Ilosaarirock. I was stupid enough to want to be as upfront as possible,
and indeed I could reach the barricade in front of the stage with my arm
extended. It was just that there were 4-5 people standing even betwen me
and the barricade. So it was pretty packed. It was kinda uncomfortable
but since I have no phobia of crowds or anything, it was OK. Until the
band started. People started pogo-ing like in a nice HC punk gig, except
that every time they came down, they hit someone. And at least 1/3 of
the people were jumping up and down. Shit, at that point even such a
kool ass as I started panicing (having got dozens of nasty hits
already). It took me some 20 minutes to fight my way up to people's arms
to be pulled over the barricade by the guards. And I surely wasn't the
only one in a dire need to get ut of the crowd's feet. But I can easily
imagine that if you are a little girl or something, there is just no way
out of there unless the people around you are prepared to help you. And
on that you really can't count on a rock festival, since 2/3 of the
people are piss drunk and the rest stoned. =)
Uh, kinda got carried away. Anyway my point was, that this stuff is
really not fun for anyone. The metal "crowd pressure fences" they use at
Roskilde (see today's Hesari) seem like a smart idea, but as we sadly
saw, they can't prevent these things from happening.. So what you can
do? Personally I prefer smaller events, or at a larger event, several
smaller stages instead of just one big, but obviously if you're
determined to see this or that band and a 10,000 others are as well,
that's a nasty situation that a smaller venue can even make worse..
