This is awesomely hilarious. Or hilariously awesome. You decide.
"Phish fans who came out to the Hampton Coliseum Friday for the band?s first show in five years were shocked and a little dismayed to find Shakedown Street
closed.
Shakedown Street is what fans of the group call the row of vendors? tables and booths that are an essential part of the jam-band experience. Although a
federal judge in Norfolk ruled against allowing representatives of the band to seize suspected bootleggers? property, there was a separate, larger crackdown
on the selling of just about everything.
?They won?t let us vend,? said Sarah Rose, a 34-year-old who?d come from Portland with five of her handmade dresses ? one featured a big smiling sun ?
as well as gems and jewelry. ?They won?t let us set up anywhere. I?ve been to like 100 shows and I?ve never had this happen. This is a community. They
told us they were ?expecting the worst.? Expecting the worst of what, peace love and happiness??
With the village of peddlers gone, the parking lots at the Mothership ? sorry, the Hampton Coliseum ? were decidedly ordinary, with people simply drinking
beers from the backs of their SUVs or sitting on coolers. (Except for the people wearing wings, and the guy in the ape suit holding the sign that read
he was ape-you-know-what to get a ticket.)
The lots opened at 2 p.m. for the 7:30 show. The city said undercover cops would be patrolling the lots and they were; two guys got arrested for selling
beer, a misdemeanor that meant no handcuffs, less than an hour after the lots opened.
Adam Katz came from Manhattan with nearly $15,000 in gemstones, hoping to sell $5,000 worth. Friday he was just worried about his merchandise getting confiscated.
?If we?d had a spot I?d have easily done $10,000 in sales.?
Vendors had been pushed to an overflow lot, but even then they had to have permits, and police on bikes were checking for them. Security patrolled the
lots in golf carts; bike cops rolled up on Phil Lesh of Charlottesville, asking for his permit. He didn?t have one for the stones and hemp necklaces he
was selling, but he said he wasn?t going to pack up immediately. The permits, an officer said, were $500 and could have been purchased in advance.
Did Lesh, who?s been to countless Phish shows, know he was going to need a permit to sell shells and such here?
?Come on man,? he said. ?What do you think? I don?t need the hassle man, I?m just trying to make a living, feed my kids. It?s a depression going on.?"
