Nissan Pavilion is Dead to Me (For Now)

I sent this letter to Nissan Pavilion after an unhappy concert experience there this last Sunday. If I receive a response from them or the Virginia Department of Emergency Management (who also received a copy of the letter) I will post it here.

=====
Adam Gerard
[my address]
Washington, DC 20009

May 13, 2008

Nissan Pavilion at Stone Ridge
7800 Cellar Door Dr.
Bristow, VA 20136

To Whom It May Concern:

I attended the Sunday, May 10 Radiohead concert at Nissan Pavilion and I am appalled at the lack of preparation on the venue’s part for emergency weather conditions. With over a decade’s experience in organizing outdoor shows, your poor preparation for the storm that hit the DC area on Sunday is simply reprehensible. The result of this lack of foresight created an environment for concert goers so unsafe that I will not attend another concert at Nissan Pavilion until you have addressed these dangerous conditions.

The rain was not a surprise. Weather reports accurately warned us of what was to come including flood warnings throughout the region. You know that due to the design of the pavilion, flooding is a possibility. The venue should have been ready with trained staff prepared for potential flooding along with a contingency plan to help concert goers enter and exit as safely as possible. But it was clear that there were no special preparations for the weather. Attendees were left to completely fend for themselves. Just one example: the concrete walkway behind the 300 sections of your venue was flooded with water rising up to my ankles. Many people tried to exit out the front of the venue under the cover of the pavilion which had a clear path to a non-flooded and paved walkway. But your staff refused to let us through, telling us all to turn around and guiding us directly into the flooded walkway.

And the unsafe conditions continued. There was a complete lack of crowd control, no signage I could see guiding concert goers back to the parking lots in the dark and rain, and due to a lack of walkways, people shared the road with frustrated drivers who were just starting the multiple-hour trek out of the Nissan Pavilion grounds.

This is unacceptable and is an embarrassment for one of the premier concert venues in the DC area. I don’t expect a refund; I saw the concert that I paid to see. But I demand that you take actions to address the problems that have come to light as a result of this concert. Until this has been done, I cannot feel safe attending a concert at the Nissan Pavilion.

Sincerely,

Adam Gerard

cc: Virginia Department of Emergency Management

The Art of Sandwich

My Lunch Sandwich.

If you join me at lunch, I will make you one too.

When Auto Stop Faucets Attack!

I Died For Your Enjoyment of a DQ Blizzard

Sent to me today, Christmas day:



Does Dairy Queen think I'm Jesus?

A New Day Dawns on Lotion

The lotions have survived the evening. I feel they have gained acceptance into the men's bathroom. They are officially part of the environment. Now people just need to use them.

Overnight I realized that if we were going to make real progress in the men's bathroom, if lotioning was going to become an accepted practice in a public space, things would need to be a little different than in the women's room. No fragrances, no frilly bottles, and we will need easy access so it's possible to lotion up with no one seeing you do it.

Enter Neutrogena Norwegian Formula Body Moisturizer. Look at that manly bottle, large and in charge. Fragrance free, so dudes in my office won't be walking around smelling like buttercups or lavender or other crap like that. And this stuff was first used by Norwegian fisherman! If men can moisturize in between battling man-eating sharks and angry narwhals while trying to catch fish for a living in the Arctic, then the men in my office can certainly be confident in their masculinity while they moisturize in between meetings and cups of coffee.

So now the option is there. We will all just have to wait and see if anyone uses it.

Live Blogging the Bathroom

Women's bathrooms are often different from men's. This is a fact that has recently come to my attention. And we're talking more than just that one tends to have urinals and the other does not.

For example, the couch disparity. Though not frequently, I have been told it is not surprising to find couches in women's restrooms (usually upscale or department store restrooms). As a guy, I know I have seen couches in our bathrooms, but I cannot remember the last time. In fact, it stretches my memory back so far that the last time might have been when I was a child young enough to be brought into the women's restroom with my mom.

Here at work I've learned that the entrance way to the women's restroom is carpeted. And in that entranceway there is a ledge and on that ledge are various beauty care products — moisturizers, lotions, hair sheen. In the men's room we got nothing!

Until today.

The office recently obtained two extra bottles of hand lotion that were going to be disposed of. Because I had whined about the separate but not equalness of the men's and women's restrooms in our office before, my coworkers decided I should place these lotions in the men's room. So I have done just that.

And now we sit and wait to see what happens. Will they get used? Will non-moisturizing men see the lotion and realize this is the cure to their flaky and cracked skin? Or maybe I'm underestimating the men in my building; maybe several of them already frequently moisturize and will truly appreciate the convenience of having lotions readily available for consumption in the restroom after washing their hands. However, it's also possible that these bottles will go untouched and will be thrown out by the janitorial service at the end of the day.

No matter the results, voteprime will be here all day, live-blogging the bathroom lotion activity!

• 11:05am  Two bottles of lotion have been placed on the ledge in the entranceway to the bathroom. I asked the women in our office and they told me this is where the sundries are placed in their restroom.
  
  Hmm? They seem sort of small there, almost too hard to notice. Especially since guys are not used to having the lotion option available. I almost feel I should add a sign, or a post-it.


• 12:28pm  There has been absolutely no movement on the bottles. I'm tempted to throw a sign up there. However, I don't want to jump the gun. There will be more traffic a few hours after lunch. And maybe the idea of lotion in the men's room is so foreign to a lot of these guys that it needs some time to sink in. A few trips in and out and people start to notice the bottles. Maybe later in the week when it is obvious the bottles are here to stay, a few dudes muster up the courage to moisturize. Today, a sign might be overkill. But maybe that's just what we need! I'm torn.
  
  For now, we continue to sit and wait.


• 1:13pm  Enough waiting. A sign has been added. "Feel Free to Use." Simple and clear. Plus, I realized a whole diatribe on how the women's restroom has this and I'm just trying to give us all equal opportunities would have not only been distracting, but there is no way I could have fit it all on a Post-it.
  
  I placed the note and sat down inside a stall (I had actual business to take care of). Almost immediately I heard someone walk in. I'd like to believe they paused a bit before going to a urinal. However, on his way out his footsteps were clearly aimed at leaving the restroom. There was no lotion to be had on that trip.
  
  So now more waiting.


• 1:31pm  No bathroom updates, but Voter Steve brings up a good point in the comments:
  It's certainly possible that the lotion goes unused because the guys fear that it's used, and/or because they're worried that people haven't given their hands a good washing before using it.
  This is an excellent point. Maybe I should add a bottle of hand sanitizer to the mix just to reassure everybody that this lotion operation is on the up-and-up.
  
  I bet the women's restroom already has hand sanitizer.


• 2:35pm   The lotions in the men's room have still not moved. Before you get discouraged, Voter LoLo has some encouraging words:
  I think it might take a few days to get the men used to the lotion idea. You're sort of working against decades of culturally ingrained behavior that women are programmed with...men need time to learn to pamper themselves in the bathroom and to go in groups. Give it a day or two and I'm sure it will happen.
  To think this simple act of bringing lotions into the men's room could make such a huge change in our society.
  
  A female Voter wanted to know more information about the popularity of these women's amenities. Yes, they are there, but do they get used? Two female coworkers were very helpful with the information (while another laughed at me from a distance).
  
  First, my coworkers think that these lotions and other items are provided by other women in the building, not by the building management itself. Second, they definitely see the lotions moving around so it seems they are getting used. Bottles get finished and are disposed of but they have yet to see a repeat bottle; once it's gone, it's gone. And third, some are definitely more popular than others. I was so inquisitive that one coworker went and grabbed all the lotions in their bathroom. The Victoria's Secret lotion and the Mango Jojoba lotion were both full when they were first brought to the bathroom and as you can see, they are both nearing the bottom of the bottle. The other two bottles seem to not get used much at all.
  
  Also, most of the women don't notice the carpet in the entrance way to their bathroom. Oh, what I would give for a luxury like carpet in the newly designated lotioning area of my men's room!


• 3:26pm  Still no movement whatsoever on the lotions in the men's room. This trip to the bathroom I actually picked them up and moved them around a bit, hoping it might look to others as if someone had used them.


• 5:01pm  The bottles have been moved! In my previous trip I kind of scattered them a bit and when I returned this time they were very neatly put back next to each other, once again against the wall.
  
  Someone might have used them! Or maybe the cleaning crew just tidied things up (they do clean during the day too). Sadly, we just don't know. We will just have to watch the lotion in the bottles and see if any disappears. They still look pretty full.

And that just about does it for today. I think I've live-blogged the heck out of two bottles of lotion. But I think we can agree that this was a necessary public service for all the bathroom-going men in the world.

Did we accomplish anything? That's a tough question to answer today. Only time will tell, really. Someday maybe all bathrooms will be equal and historians will look back on this post as the watershed moment. "I have a dream..."

Look for new posts down the road as the tale of the bottles progresses.

Unthankfulness

Yes, it's Thanksgiving time and we're all very thankful for things like friends and family and cute dogs and lollipops and Miller High Life 6-packs being so damn cheap. But I think during this time of year we should also declare the things we are unthankful for.

So here are 10 things I am NOT thankful for on this Thanksgiving:

1. Lee Greenwood
2. Everyone who thinks "God Bless the USA" is a great song. Actually, even if you just think it's an "okay" song, I'm still unthankful for you.
   Yes, I could combine numbers 1 and 2, but I am that unthankful for both that I felt they each deserved their own slot.
3. Really terrible toilet paper. It's called Charmin Ultra, people. Look it up. They ain't kiddin' about the "Ultra" part.
4. People who eat a meal for lunch like a Big Mac, a family size bag of Doritos and an entire box of Oreos (mmm, "double stuf." And no Google, I don't mean "double stuff!) but then wash it all down with a diet soda because they don't want the extra calories. Maybe I'm not unthankful for them, just confused, but they're going on this list anyway. Madame Pepperman, my 11th grade French teacher that was addicted to Diet Mountain Dew, I'm looking directly at you here.
5. The term "Double Stuf." Oreo, why did you leave an "F" off of "Stuf?" I'm not a parent, but if I were, I would hate to have to explain that one to my child. Shame on you, Oreo!
6. People who stand on the left side of the escalator in any DC Metro station. WALK LEFT, STAND RIGHT! People that live in DC complain about this so much that it's almost cliché. But that is because this is common sense. And you're not all tourists! Some of you live in the DC Metro Area and still stand on the left. How do you not hear the rest of us complaining about this? We're annoying as fuck and we're whining about you! If you listen, we'll stop our whining.
7. Not only am I unthankful for the fake Krispy Kreme in Dupont Circle, but the Fractured Prune that opened up down the street has now closed. My mom has always told me that the doughnut Gods have a reason for everything, but this one has been really hard for me to deal with.
8. The color teal.
9. People who got angry with Ann Coulter for calling John Edwards a "faggot" but feel it's okay to attack his manhood by calling him a pansy. If these flowers could voice their outrage at the derogatory use of their name, there would be much more public outcry at this practice. Also, little known fact: John Edwards is a 3-time Ultimate Fighting champion. "Pansy" or "faggot?" Maybe. Could he kick your ass in a no holds barred fight to the death? Most definitely.
10. Those push button sinks in my office building bathroom. We are all adults in this building. There is a number combination on the door to keep out all the bathroom roaming ne'er-do-wells. Are you really that concerned about the tenants of the building running wild with the sinks that you have to keep us limited to about 5 seconds per push? It's impossible to wash your hands properly with these things. And not only is it unsanitary, but it's un-American. Yeah, I'm going there; if we are forced to wash our hands in 5 seconds or less, the terrorists have already won!

Are you unthankful for something as well? Tell the world in the comments!

Happy Thanksgiving!