Working Denver
I love Denver. It’s a fantastic town. They definitely cleaned it up for the DNC. But, even now, on this little mall our hotel is situated on there were just two female cops shaking down a couple of black teens and tossing them in the back of their van. A kind of weird thing to watch. It happened in three minutes.
So it leads me to believe that this is a pretty crazy lawful city. Apparently the city gets to keep all the new toys they got for the DNC. I’ve seen lots and lots of cops here. But maybe that’s just downtown. All my friends who live here are still on the playa. I’ll have to ask them when they get here.
This leads me to our job at the Convention Center.
I work in a union town. I work with complex studio systems. I live inside of rules. But this is out of control. At every turn, this project is plagued by committees and labor reps messing with our project. They nixxed the aerial rig. They today stopped our bamboo wall. It seems like they are messing with us. But really it is just that they are stuck on rules!
I went from an anarchist festival to a rules obsessed convention manned by bureaucrats and frustrating union dudes. I can understand the use of unions, for sure. But somehow, this just seems couterproductive. We are the new kids in town, we are doing something totally different. We don’t fit into their neat little box of how a convention booth should look. They are making the road difficult for us.
There are lessons being learned.
And hopefully the lessons are being learned on both sides.
I look forward to when we are all laughing about this when the festival is up and we have the coolest most innovative booth out there. Until then… Lets just learn the lessons.
Tags: Denver