AC/DC Decompression...
The worse thing about working at the Pillow Dome ( B.C. Place - Known to those of us older Vancouver-ites as the former ) is the extremely overbearing air-conditioning that floods the building to keep the air supported roof up. A roof that they're now talking of not removing after the Olympics, due to the Province being in debt - due to the recession and the olympics.
The environment just dries you out and it's far too easy to feel like an insect husk sucked dry by a huge spider after a week of wandering it 's cavernous interior. The setup was good at first, we had a few no shows, a couple of minor injuries, and a couple of lates but nothing I was really concerned about. On other shows with the steel guys out east, they'd had a huge number of no shows on the alberta dates - Mind you they didn't point out till later that they'd been rained on 24/7 the whole time in the last open air venue. Which easily would have explained the mass no shows to tear down steel staging. Steel pre stage isn't even remotely fun unless you get paid good money, fed regularly and the environment is decent. Banging steel in the rain is always avoided by the sane.
On Thursday, Steel day 2 everything changed when the show production advance guys wanted to move all the truck loaders, Riggers/ Ground riggers and a pile of box pushers a day ahead. ( The show had been rained on in Alberta and the lighting sound video and effect gear had to be pulled out of trucks a day earlier that planned to ) 40 guys total had to be contacted, with time and date changes or replaced by fresh guys. All while people were starting to bail on the strike for Sunday. I could barely keep up with the bailers while i called new people. I ended up calling friends and dispatching people who called me site unseen. I didn't sleep that night wondering If I'd have enough skilled guys to make it all happen... or if they 'd all show up the next day.
We were 6 short on friday on the pusher crew... oddly it was all the guys who called ME wanting work. So I replaced them with an emergency call to our sister local. Getting odd movie guys out at the last minute to shore up the numbers. While I and the other dispatcher focused on fixing all the changes for production day and the out. We called extra after that just in case we hadn't factored out all the changes. Thankfully, we did as we ended up 2 short for the production out that saturday evening.
All the late night steel crews showed up ( it's amazing what double time pay at 2:30 am will do to motivate crew ) they were all seasoned members who rocked the steel climbing and staging to point that by the third shift we were way ahead of schedule. So any Lates and no shows were almost unnecessary to replace. We got guys in to fill the empty spots and the last day of steel that morning was going great... the roof was down and the crews and cranes were humming along. When there was an altercation between one of our locals ( a nonmember ) and one of the staging tour crew.
I found that the local had stolen the touring guys climbing helmet the night before. And, stupidly worn it on site the next day with the guys name badly covered up. We cut the local and told him to leave.... And I deleted his number from our auxiliary list right there I was so pissed off. Thankfully, he wasn't a member of the local but he was a relative of one of ours which was really embarrassing after all the hard work that we'd done to get good crew and even with the few no shows and lates, get the show happening and struck.
The next big one is U2...We ain't seen nothing yet....
The worse thing about working at the Pillow Dome ( B.C. Place - Known to those of us older Vancouver-ites as the former ) is the extremely overbearing air-conditioning that floods the building to keep the air supported roof up. A roof that they're now talking of not removing after the Olympics, due to the Province being in debt - due to the recession and the olympics.
The environment just dries you out and it's far too easy to feel like an insect husk sucked dry by a huge spider after a week of wandering it 's cavernous interior. The setup was good at first, we had a few no shows, a couple of minor injuries, and a couple of lates but nothing I was really concerned about. On other shows with the steel guys out east, they'd had a huge number of no shows on the alberta dates - Mind you they didn't point out till later that they'd been rained on 24/7 the whole time in the last open air venue. Which easily would have explained the mass no shows to tear down steel staging. Steel pre stage isn't even remotely fun unless you get paid good money, fed regularly and the environment is decent. Banging steel in the rain is always avoided by the sane.
On Thursday, Steel day 2 everything changed when the show production advance guys wanted to move all the truck loaders, Riggers/ Ground riggers and a pile of box pushers a day ahead. ( The show had been rained on in Alberta and the lighting sound video and effect gear had to be pulled out of trucks a day earlier that planned to ) 40 guys total had to be contacted, with time and date changes or replaced by fresh guys. All while people were starting to bail on the strike for Sunday. I could barely keep up with the bailers while i called new people. I ended up calling friends and dispatching people who called me site unseen. I didn't sleep that night wondering If I'd have enough skilled guys to make it all happen... or if they 'd all show up the next day.
We were 6 short on friday on the pusher crew... oddly it was all the guys who called ME wanting work. So I replaced them with an emergency call to our sister local. Getting odd movie guys out at the last minute to shore up the numbers. While I and the other dispatcher focused on fixing all the changes for production day and the out. We called extra after that just in case we hadn't factored out all the changes. Thankfully, we did as we ended up 2 short for the production out that saturday evening.
All the late night steel crews showed up ( it's amazing what double time pay at 2:30 am will do to motivate crew ) they were all seasoned members who rocked the steel climbing and staging to point that by the third shift we were way ahead of schedule. So any Lates and no shows were almost unnecessary to replace. We got guys in to fill the empty spots and the last day of steel that morning was going great... the roof was down and the crews and cranes were humming along. When there was an altercation between one of our locals ( a nonmember ) and one of the staging tour crew.
I found that the local had stolen the touring guys climbing helmet the night before. And, stupidly worn it on site the next day with the guys name badly covered up. We cut the local and told him to leave.... And I deleted his number from our auxiliary list right there I was so pissed off. Thankfully, he wasn't a member of the local but he was a relative of one of ours which was really embarrassing after all the hard work that we'd done to get good crew and even with the few no shows and lates, get the show happening and struck.
The next big one is U2...We ain't seen nothing yet....
cyanyde:
Thank you sweetie! 