There’s a lot of good things to say about Bumbershoot this year. I’m appreciating that it seems to be a little less crowded than usual. I am grateful for such a glorious weekend, weather-wise. The staff and volunteers are fairly up on it, and sets tend to start on time. I am gathering further Bumbershoot Pro Tips which I will not share just yet. I am seeing a lot of interesting arts and music and other assorted acts.
Allen Stone does white-boy soul that ain’t afraid to get ugly. It’s always nice to hear cuts from You Forget It In People live, even if it’s at Key Arena. (Sidenote: Why can’t I bring water in there again?) AgesandAges has at least 3.75 awesomely good songs, if not more. I love Doug Benson Loves Movies, and may return for a second performance on Monday.
But I haven’t been able to tell a soul–of course I have, but relatively speaking. Because of the worst thing about Bumbershoot this year: AT&T coverage at Seattle Center has been so spotty the first two days that I moved down to the Edge network and have now given up on being to tweet/text from some venues entirely. Don’t tell me that the network is overloaded. Just “use the network less” doesn’t cut it. This shit can’t stand.
So it’s time that wifi was included in the ticket price and as part of the Bumbershoot experience. It is a shame, an embarrassment, to have a world-class arts festival in the middle of a tech-savvy city and be unable to call, text, or tweet effortlessly and unabated. It’s time that Bumbershoot provide wifi to the masses all Labor Day weekend long.
And this is where you come in, Qwest CenturyLink. Right now everyone knows you as the asshole suits that changed the name of Seahawks Stadium. But instead, you could be the internet company that brought wifi to Seattle Center and Bumbershoot. One Reel, get on that. We needz it.
Hi Audrey,
I certainly share your frustrations with the AT&T network overload at Bumbershoot. Many festival staff, including myself, lean hard on our iPhones to help us operate the festival. Over the past two afternoons and evenings, any phone on the ATT network has been inoperable as a communications device.
Network overload is not a new issue at Bumbershoot or any large public gathering. We’ve been tracking the problem for over ten years. In the last few years, though, the ubiquity of high-bandwidth smart phones has grown exponentially and the problem has compounded.
For at least the last 5 or 6 years (I can’t recall exactly) we began contacting the major carriers, asking them to bring temporary cell towers into the vicinity of Bumbershoot over Labor Day weekend (the actual overload problem occurs at the local cell towers as they can only process so many actions at any one time). From year to year, some carriers will actually do this for us, and others will choose not to.
Verizon used to bring in a temp tower every year, and then they upgraded their local infrastructure and the temps were no longer needed (loss of market share, while a negative thing for the carrier, also has the positive impact of freeing up bandwidth on a network).
In the past three years, the explosive growth of the iPhone market has stressed the local ATT network. Last year, ATT installed a killer long-term temporary system at Seattle Center specifically for the larger festivals. It worked great. This year, for reasons I am not privy to, ATT has deactivated that system. Thus mine and yours and everyone’s iPhones turn into bricks when you want to use them the most. It is completely frustrating.
I know that connectivity infrastructure is of major importance to Seattle Center, and they are actively working on ways to bring their infrastructure up to date. They also face the same problem today that all the rest of our community and our country faces… no money.
*In the future, when Seattle Center funding issues, particularly involving core infrastructure and the Center’s Century 21 initiative, come in front of the public it is imperative that our community supports Seattle Center.*
Meanwhile, the internal connectivity requirements of a festival the size and scope of Bumbershoot have for years outstripped the resources of not only Seattle Center but the entire surrounding neighborhood. To compensate, we have been experimenting with various means of temporarily deploying ultra-high-bandwidth connectivity at the Center, which requires us to bypass the existing Center infrastructure.
Just a few days ago while we were gearing up for bumbershoot on site, we came up with an idea that could conceivably allow us to boost the public wifi bandwidth at Bumbershoot. It’s just an idea, but I guarantee you we will pursue it.
As for your question about bringing water into Key Arena, that’s an existing house policy of Key Arena and it is not uncommon in similar venues around the country. You didn’t specify if you were trying to bring in a bottle or if they made you dump your water outside. When we used Memorial Stadium our policy was “no disposable water bottles” and that came about after someone was hurt by a water bottle hurled into the crowd. One jerk can ruin it for everyone. So we made folks pour their drinks into paper cups with no lid. And people were no longer getting hurt that way.
Other venues have strict “no outside liquids” policies, and those stem from the very real fact that at large concerts, all sorts of people commonly attempt to sneak booze into the event. When they are successful in getting booze in, they ultimately are putting the venue’s liquor license and all guests’ safety at risk. So if you are a particularly risk-adverse facility, you make everyone dump everything.
Thanks again for sharing your thoughts and concerns. Bumbershoot belongs to the community and it is most helpful to hear what is on constituents’ minds, especially new ideas and constructive criticism such as you have provided.
Best,
Jon
Thanks for the info, Jon! We are yapping at AT&T as well. I’ve been covering Bumbershoot for a number of years, and this is the worst it’s been for phones. Even on Wi-Fi I could tell AT&T’s text service was struggling (since different network). You certainly notice lack of wireless connectivity when it’s gone these days.
Hey Jon, thanks for the response. I’m glad that there’s ideas floating about and movement towards a long-term solution, just thinking about what can be done in the shorter term too. If data’s the problem, free wifi would take care of that. And why not get a local sponsor to pony up? I’m a problem solver, Jon, and I’m thinking about what would be win-win for everybody.
And yes, AT&T is THE WORST.
Can we also get a bag check at Main Stage? I couldn’t see Hall & Oates last night because I couldn’t bring my equipment in. I wasn’t interested in using it (was not equipment that would have worked well in that arena), but couldn’t walk all the way home and back within 30 minutes.
It’s not just AT&T. I have T-Mobile on an Android Nexus S and I had dead or slow data connections in about 50% of Seattle Center. Also, Exhibition Hall is a cell phone black hole. No cell signal at all reaches anywhere in there, so you’re stuck for an hour with no way for friends to reach you.
I appreciate the response from Jon, interesting to know they’ve looked into it.
I enjoyed Bumbershoot this year, but it was less enjoyable than the previous 4 years I’ve gone. Some changes that made it worse:
– Bumbershoot being moved indoors – reduced outdoor venues, increased indoor venues -> led to 50% of the shows I saw being inside, missing out on the super nice sunny weather.
Jon Stone said to the Seattle PI “more often than not it’s not so beautiful Labor Day weekend” but he’s way misinformed if he thinks that’s true. Labor Day weekend is always pretty nice, especially compared to rainy July, and Seattlites can put up with a little drizzle for 1 hour of the weekend.
– Broad Street stage gone. That was one of the best outdoor stages.
– Exhibition Hall still takes 30 minutes to admit a line of people that end up filling only 1/4 of the hall. They funnel people through a single narrow door. Don’t understand why they do this every year and can’t open more the other doors next to the 1 door they open.
– Most sets started late, some up to 25 minutes late. (Pentagram, School of Seven Bells, …)
– Line for beer garden @ Fisher stage was 1/4 mile long during The Kills, just gave up.
– Not enough exits / poor layout – no more Broad St exit, and finding the EMP exit was confusing + a lot further to get to.
Yes! Exits! I finally convinced security to let me out at another “not public” exit because I had press credentials. It shouldn’t be that hard to get out of there.
I was OK with moving Broad Street to the Fountain Lawn, but yes yes yes on the exit situation. Was there only one way out of Key Arena? And no way out of the festival grounds? At some point just open the doors and let people out of there instead of making them navigate a maze that even the security guards didn’t understand.
Julia?
http://www.tmsfeatures.com/columns/social-media/social-studies/114732579a.html