There is a little graphic that I use on the site of a picnic basket. You can see it if you scroll down a few posts, to the historical society picnic. It’s a modest little basket, with a traditional red and white table cloth. There are two items included that are essential for a picnic- A baguette of French bread, and a bottle of wine.
One of my favorite places to picnic is the lawn at city hall in front of the summer concert series. And my picnic usually includes a baguette of bread, and a bottle of wine.
At the start of the series, the concertgoers on the lawn were told no more alcohol.
Why?
My concert neighbor Henry Merritt, a guy who can tell you what cut of beef goes with what Cabernet, groused “What next? They’re gonna tell us we can’t dance?”
People do want to have fun, and they do want to follow the rules. But the whole notion that we have had a problem and we have to curb consumption is nonsense.
I love the summer concerts. Unless I’m traveling, I never miss one. I sit under my tree (and Yes, it is MY tree, you can ask anyone nearby.) The reason it is my tree is because I have been coming to these concert so long, when I first came I needed a place to rest my back while I was nursing. No, I was not drinking alcohol.
I have never, in the last ten years, seen anyone drunk and disorderly at a concert. Happy, relaxed, a bit loud perhaps, but rowdy? Not ever.
My street neighbor Dave Stewart gripped “What about the Hollywood Bowl? Wine is always welcome there. They trying to chase us away?”
The security guards we nice enough, but when someone sits down on a Thursday evening, ready for a picnic, and is told that part of that picnic is now contraband, it dampens the enthusiasm. Not the throat.
I do think it’s important to live by the rules, at least as long as the rules makes sense. But I can’t imagine that this is going to do anything but inspires us all to leave the corkscrew at home, and bring a thermos instead.
What are your thoughts? To drink or not to drink?
This is another case of if it isn’t broke don’t fix it. I, too have never witnessed anyone drunk. If their, the rule makers) concern is strictly about no “glass containers” then I am sure concert goers would gladly come up with plastic containers or carafes to comply. Culver City concert goers do want to follow the rules.
I do not drink alcohol, however, I am saddened to see anything that chips away at a fabulous community tradition that was working just fine, thank you very much.