Madison decided to force Halloween goers to State Street to buy tickets at $5 this year to prevent bad behavor. It’s nothing but government wanting to collect what would be about $400,000 as revenue. What intelligent person can think that buying a ticket to get on state street will prevent misconduct? A small group of maybe 20 people have damaged some building the last few years. I’m sure they can buy a ticket just as easily as the other people.
The party is over 25 years old and estimates of normal attendance are 80,000 persons. Last week 4,000 tickets were sold. As of today they have sold 7,200 tickets. Many students are planing on going to an alternative area, or going friday night instead of saturday. Like that should be a surprise. I think the idiots that came up with this idea had better be ready to have a disaster as many go to a different location that hasn’t been prepared for 70,000 people that will not be on state street.
I’d bet they’re doing it to offset the cost of clean-up, repair, extra police, and all the other bullshit that goes with college town Halloween celebrations.
How exactly is that going to work? Are they going to block off every entrance to State Street for its whole length? What about people using local businesses?
I don’t see how on earth this will prohibit bad behavior. It will either destroy the fun of the event by whittling down the crowd and having an even larger police presence, or the bad behavior will continue (get 80,000 people together with alcohol and you will have some jerks).
Kinda sad, really. Halloween on State Street is such a sight to see.
I don’t know if it matters too much but I think that 80,000 number is way too high. Half of that is probably more likely.
According to my daughter who is a student at Wisconsin a lot of people plan on going out Friday night to avoid the Saturday cover charge, especially since there is a home hockey game Sat. night.
I believe the plan is to use plastic snow fence to block off State St. at the street intersections and only allow ticket holders in after 7:30 pm. I say good luck with that but it is probably worth a shot because the costs for security and clean up are pretty high.
It’s not the peace-loving Madisonians who cause the problems. It’s the goddamn Minnesotans storming the border and sacking the street. Screw the illegal immigrant problem, deploy the Wisconsin National Guard along the WI-MN border with orders to shoot to kill.
I lost my typed addition due too the wonderful service provider I have, so now you get a short addition.
80,000 is from the number of tickets that Madison says on tv they expected to sell. They also are giving the bullshit line that the tickets are only because they’ll prevent damage, not at all because the the dollar signs they see before their eyes. You’ll have to buy a ticket if you want to stop at a state street bar.
Personally, I believe the filthy hippies that infest Madison are to blame!
I have never been to the Madison Halloween celebration, but my understanding is that there are can be over 75 thousand people participating in the celebration. Evidently, there will only be nine entrances to State Street to accomodate all the attendees. Good luck with that.
On preview, Montgomery Burns beat me to the punch.
Taking you at your word, but those 20 people can cause quite a bit of negative publicity the other 250,000 in town have to apologize for during the next 12 months.
And all this time I thought it was from the failure to build that wall along the Wisconsin-Illinois border.
The UW Madison student paper covered it real well one or two years ago. One of the reports was around during a window smashing event. Most of the people were gone by then and a small group of people 10 to 20 were invouled with that years bad behavor. 20 people damaging buildings out of 80,000 isn’t bad. To make things worse the bars took Madison to court to prevent them from closing the bars at 9:00 on state street during the party.
The student paper has too many articles on the celebration to post them as links. Search the site for a ton of stuff on it. I guess the article where the reporter was there and a small group caused a problem was more than two years ago. I have problems with years bluring together.
After a bit of reading the event hit a peak addence of 100,000 in the past. For the people not familar with the location, that is a super large gathering.
This year’s event came of with 38,000 in attendance, which is half of the expected 80,000 people. They really put a damper on this event. They didn’t have any mob violence this year. A few people tried to start something at about 2:oo AM and were disapointed that they couldn’t get a riot going. Too bad evil bastards, you couldn’t manage a riot this year.
