Drug users coming to the show

[Martin McCaffery]

Worse yet: Patchoolli. I don't have much sense of smell left, but that stuff is still the worst.

[Jim Cassedy]

Our big, old theater building occupies the entire width of a city block. The big public entrance
fronts on Mission St, in San Francisco, but the back of the building is in a dark alley, where we
have an employee/delivery entrance, and it's also where a couple of the main fire exits from
the building are. Almost every night, a group of 'street people' hang out and drink and do drugs
in one of emergency exit stairwells. Sometimes they have a boom-box or make so much noise
fighting among themselves that it can be heard in the main auditorium. There's not much we can
do. We have a security guard, but 'street people' here have no fear of the police, so they're not
going to be scared off by some rent-a-cop, even though he's a pretty big ex-military type of guy.
The police are little help, although to be fair, it's not entirely their fault, given the general tolerance
for bad behavior by the politicians here. Occasionally the alley guys can be reasoned with, but
fortunately they're often unconscious by the last show, and then things are quiet. Some poor
theater employee gets stuck every morning cleaning up the mess these slobs leave behind.

Most mornings, it's an assortment of empty beer cans, cigarette buts, junk food wrappers
and assorted discarded drug paraphernalia - - and the area usually reeks of urine and vomit
BackStairs_2.jpg

This was one morning last month. Somebody had literally moved into the stairway, with
a cot blocking one of the main emergency exits! One of those bags contained assorted
garbage, and I'm pretty sure the other was full of feces. I could smell this from across the
street. The PD wasn't much help moving this guy- - but the Fire Dept took it more seriously!
BackStairs_1.jpg

I recently saw what looks like a new steam cleaning device being delivered to the theater, but I'm not
sure if it's something that was for use in the kitchen, or to sanitize the back stairs after a morning like this.

[Ryan Gallagher]

Our alley suffers similar sometimes... nothing on our block but two theatres, two hotels and their associated restaurants, parking garage behind us. Often they can be reasoned with, but you still have to have good street smarts and judgement about which ones to engage versus which ones just to lock the back door and wait for them to go away.

We are fortunate that the city has a fairly proactive cleanup and safety team that is all over downtown. Cops are generally useless for these things in the alleys unless they are assaulting someone, the security crews at the hotels are pretty proactive and team players with our folks too thankfully. Unfortunately there is no easy answer. If not imported directly to sanctuary cities by smaller areas trying to get rid of their problem, it is just the trash cycle of an urban environment that centralizes the problem, big city trash often equals food or resources for the afflicted or destitute.

It's a bit unfortunate, as a functioning live venue the alley is literally an extension of our everyday work area, the load in and load out crew is subjected to whatever mess is out there... none of production folks have suitable hazmat PPE to really clean up such things (nor are we eager for it to come within our job descriptions).

Sometimes the restaurant cooking oil deposit receptacles are plum full, and rather than wait till after a pickup they'll just pour more in and watch it overflow and run all the way down the alley. We have had to purchase and spread cat litter or other oil spill absorbers twice in an emergency to keep the loading area safe enough to utilize without the truck ramp becoming a slip and slide.

[Ed Gordon]

Our big, old theater building occupies the entire width of a city block. The big public entrance fronts on Mission St, in San Francisco, but the back of the building is in a dark alley, where we have an employee/delivery entrance, and it's also where a couple of the main fire exits from the building are. Almost every night, a group of 'street people' hang out and drink and do drugs in one of emergency exit stairwells. Sometimes they have a boom-box or make so much noise fighting among themselves that it can be heard in the main auditorium. .... [/B]

You could try putting a loudspeaker in the stairwell to play annoying sounds to make the area less appealing to linger in.

Another option would be to install a "Noise Stinger"

Noise stingers also known as reciprocal devices come in manual and automatic variations. They are compact ultrasonic devices that emit high frequency intrusive sounds.

You can use such a device to get rid of noisy people around you either in a room, restaurant or other places. The sounds that this device emits makes it impossible to trace the source.

The device produces two types of sound waves:

High frequency sound waves that are only audible to people under the age of 21 years.
A low frequency sound audibles to all people

This simple device is easy to use, compact and operated using a 3-volt battery. However, it’s important to note that this device can cause nausea, sweating, intense irritation, imbalance or vomiting.

There might be legal issues when using such devices. See: High-Intensity Acoustic Devices as Weapons: A look at the Legalities

[Lyle Romer]

You could try putting a loudspeaker in the stairwell to play annoying sounds to make the area less appealing to linger in.

Another option would be to install a "Noise Stinger"



There might be legal issues when using such devices. See: High-Intensity Acoustic Devices as Weapons: A look at the Legalities

Maybe REALLY bright lighting would help also.

[Marcel Birgelen]

This reminds me of a local story back in the late 90s, where a local government around here had a drug addict problem in a much used passage under some train tracks. They came up with the idea to play classical music in that passage, in an attempt to chase away the unwanted squatters. The result was the opposite of the intention: First it made the local news, then it made the national news and the passage became somewhat of a tourist attraction. Furthermore, the audience that they intended to chase away pretty much enjoyed the new ambiance and it only attracted more of them... I still remember interviews on TV with a bunch of them. Most of them agreed that the new musical ambience was actually quite nice...

[Ed Gordon]

The choice of music to play is key to the level of annoyance you can create. This one should clear the area quickly:

[Harold Hallikainen]

The local Walgreens plays the William Tell Overture over and over agsin outside the building.

[Randy Stankey]

The king of all annoying, earworm songs!

[Ryan Gallagher]

This reminds me of a local story back in the late 90s, where a local government around here had a drug addict problem in a much used passage under some train tracks. They came up with the idea to play classical music in that passage, in an attempt to chase away the unwanted squatters. The result was the opposite of the intention: First it made the local news, then it made the national news and the passage became somewhat of a tourist attraction. Furthermore, the audience that they intended to chase away pretty much enjoyed the new ambiance and it only attracted more of them... I still remember interviews on TV with a bunch of them. Most of them agreed that the new musical ambience was actually quite nice...

The Whataburger behind the concert hall in town amusingly chose classical opera and ballet music on one of those rentable trailer music blasters. Guess where the Opera and Ballet perform! LOL Thankfully that deterrent was temporary and is gone now.

[Martin Brooks]

Source: https://www.thenation.com/article/ar...-while-stoned/

True back in the day, but in the early 2000's, many places banned smoking in public places. Smoking was banned in NYC movie theaters, bars and other places on March 30, 2003.
When I was a kid, all you saw was smoke in the light from the projector. I can't even imagine how much second hand smoke I must have inhaled just from attending movies. The screens must have gotten really disgusting.

[Dustin Grush]

I haven't read through the entire thread, but I think I get the gist. Being a Drive-In, we get a fair amount of potheads that want to stink up the place. When I find them they are told to stop or leave. None have the decency to care that no one else wants to smell their stink, (often the case with cigarette smokers as well, but that's another topic.) And they reek of it when they come to buy things, and often act the general fool. I long for the days when just the smell would get someone arrested. It made people less brave with it and kept the smell and foolery down for the rest of us.

A note on harder drugs. I've been involved in Emergency Medicine as my day job for 20 years this August, I've been stuck with a needle exactly one time, and it was from some druggy that needed to dispose of his needle in our toilet tank at the theatre, thus keeping the flapper stuck open and running. Of course, I didn't realize that's what it was until it was too late.

As someone who sees the effects of drugs on a daily basis, societies are headed down the drain once they sympathize with the drug users over the general populace. It's an unpopular opinion, but we all suffer to some degree because of the choices of these people. For anyone who disagrees, I challenge them to find the nearest housing project in their city, and see what your tax dollars are paying for. You'll leave sick, either from the thought of you wasted dollar, or the smell in general.

[Leo Enticknap]

The local Walgreens plays the William Tell Overture over and over agsin outside the building.

Many years ago, there was a 7-11 in a strip mall on Sunset Boulevard near Las Palmas, a couple of blocks west of the Scientology "Psychiatry, the Industry of Death" museum. They took to playing classical music from outdoor speakers to deter homeless people and drug dealers from hanging out in the parking lot. On one occasion I stopped there to get a coffee on the way home, and, as I got out of the car, heard the prelude from J.S. Bach's Prelude and Fugue in E Minor, BWV548, blasting out of their PA. It struck me that I was likely the only customer to walk into that store who recognized the piece, and definitely the only one who had actually played it (albeit nothing like as well as the organist in the recording) the previous day!

...we all suffer to some degree because of the choices of these people. For anyone who disagrees, I challenge them to find the nearest housing project in their city, and see what your tax dollars are paying for.

They could also talk to someone who has been injured by, or the surviving relatives of someone who has been killed by, a DUI motorist. The number of these victims has increased exponentially since marijuana was fully legalized in California, a major part of the reason being that there is no objective test that is legally permissible in evidence apart from a blood sample, suspects cannot be forced to provide a blood sample, and refusal to provide that sample cannot be used in evidence against them. So obtaining a conviction for DUI of marijuana is almost impossible. The potheads know this, as a result of which accidents caused by drunk driving are relatively uncommon (because enforcement is effective: per California law, breathalyzer tests for alcohol are considered legally reliable, and refusing to take a test if an officer has probable cause to suspect you of DUI is a crime in and of itself), but accidents caused by stoned driving have become a major and growing problem. I wouldn't be in the last bit surprised if drugs turn out to have been a factor in this fatal incident on Thursday.

Bringing this back to topic, would you want stoned (or drunk, for that matter) customers stumbling around and impeding access to the emergency exits in a fire alarm evacuation?

[Randy Stankey]

One problem with marijuana is that is has been, essentially, illegal in the US since the 1930s and was classified as Schedule I in 1970. We have generations of people who grew up with the stuff being taboo. People who possessed pot or smoked it were summarily classed as criminals for no good, objective reason. (As I said, before, alcohol and tobacco were still legal.)

In my opinion, we have a similar situation to what happens when a teenager suddenly turns twenty one. There are many adolescents who might go around to occasional, clandestine beer parties in high school and college then, when they come of age, go hog wild because then are "legal." With weed, we have an entire segment of society, not just one generation, who think that they can smoke up whenever they want.

The truth is that you can't smoke pot whenever you want any more than you can drink alcohol whenever you want. We have societal norms and social rules about when and where you can or cannot drink but, because pot has been illegal for almost one hundred years, no such norms exist. It is going to take a few generations...twenty, fifty or more years... before the societal rules on the use of marijuana become more ingrained.

Until then, we're going to have to put up with stupid people who lack the class to use marijuana in any semblance of a reasonable manner.

In my opinion, if you want to smoke up on a Saturday night, that's okay with me but, for cripe's sake, do it at home!

C'Mon, people ! Grow up! Will ya'?!