The great Bluesfest lawnchair debate

Ottawa Citizen arts editor & blogger Peter Simpson has written the definitive “anti-lawnchairs-at-bluesfest” rant, titled “The scourage of lawn chairs” . A sampling: **

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PILCs (people in lawn chairs) – not all of them, but enough of them to give them all a bad name – believe that putting down a chair is akin to Columbus planting the Spanish flag on the shores of the new land: this is claimed for the lawn chair crown, and none shall challenge its unimpeded view of the stage, regardless of how long the show is, how big the crowd is, or how many times the chair sits empty while its owner toodles off for a beer or a snack or a stretch of the legs.

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The festival is getting bigger all the time, and surely it’s now big enough that a lawn-chair ban could be sustained. If a few hundred people choose not to come because they can’t stand or sit on the ground, so be it. And perhaps there are  ways to accommodate the small number of PILCs who are genuinely, medically unable to stand for long periods. There are tens of thousands of more people who are legion enough to make the festival a success without the sitting few.
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** Related: ** Ottawa Bluesfest Guide