Nate AllenEarth to the Moda Center: a bicycle helmet is not a bag. There is no universe where a bicycle helmet is also a bag. They are distinct nouns and one cannot be used for the other. Also get some goddamn bike parking, everyone knows the guy to hire. The Moda Center seems to be actively hostile to people not arriving by car.
Nate@mossyfoot did I tell you my story about the absurd experience at I went through at Moda Center trying to buy Fire season tickets at the pick-a-seat event?
@voiceofunreason no but I would believe anything. Props to the poor security kid who let an old lady through anyway, in one of the lines I attempted my "hat, not bag" gambit in, if she promised to roll her handbag so it looked smaller for the next security guy, apparently his supervisor. Otherwise people were still coming in at the beginning of the second quarter who suddenly had non-complaint bags/and or other random things considered bag-like not documented anywhere.
@mossyfoot I rolled up on my bike at like 8:45am in early November, so of course, rainy. I went to the north entrance (as instructed in the email) and there was a "welcome" sign with a Fire logo and several people milling about. No bike racks in sight, so I locked to a bench. Since it was out in the rain and early in the morning, I assumed it was okay because no one would want to use the bench. 1/x
@mossyfoot there were so few of us at the north entrance, we didn't even bother forming a line. We were all just sort of confused. Eventually someone pressed their face to the door and saw an _absolutely_ massive line wrapping around inside, but the doors were locked. Eventually one of the people in the line saw us and hustled over to open the door for us and then we had to walk to the very end of the line, which, of course, was in the parking lot. Everyone in the line had arrived by car.
2/x
@mossyfoot everyone that showed up via bike, on foot, or Tri-Met were literally left out in the cold. Why did the email specify that people arriving via Tri-Met should use the North entrance? Why have a Welcome sign if that door wasn't going to be active? If that door wasn't going to be active, why not add some detail to the sign to point people to where they should go, not great, but better than what happened.
Disrespect/disregard of people that don't use cars.
3/x
@voiceofunreason yeah unfortunately any extra season ticket money I might spend is now going into #Thorns tickets instead. And I guess I am old enough now to write an angry letter to the ownership.
@mossyfoot Yeah, they really need to figure it out.
One detail I really underlined in the email to my ticket rep:
1. People that arrive by car and bring a bag with them want to bring the bag into the arena with them because they want access to its contents during the event, so restricting size of the bag is a valid consideration, as the seats are so small there's not much room to stash a bag.
...cont
2. People that don't arrive by car and bring a bag with them, _very often_ only have the bag because it was needed to get them _to_ the arena, and won't need it until they leave the arena. So, I don't want to have to go through an enhanced security checkpoint to bring my bag in, I would rather ditch it in a bag-check/locker outside the arena so I could breeze through security like everyone else.
@voiceofunreason a thousand times this.
@mossyfoot I did not mention ebike batteries, but a similar concern. I wouldn't want to leave one outside with the bike because I'm guessing the bike rack area is poorly->entirely unmonitored but the arena would likely freak out if they were in charge of storing big bike batteries.
@voiceofunreason we parked between the two stadiums, against a steel fence. I felt a bit sketchy about it, but they were okay.
@mossyfoot this is the primary parking area, but I don't like how secluded it looks. I would guess security walks by _occasionally_ during events.
@voiceofunreason yeah it was packed.
@mossyfoot oh, that's a good detail to share with my rep:
lots of people arriving by bike means that the current system has significant efficiency costs: security having to do a lot of bag inspections that aren't necessary, and increased negative-interactions with event-goers
@mossyfoot It would be harder to say "if you improved the situation, more people would bike, trust me bro"
@voiceofunreason bikes were being hooked up to anything that seemed halfway sturdy.
@mossyfoot Wish I knew about how the Fire/Moda center business arrangement worked.
Do the parking garage fees get split, or does the Moda center keep 100% of it? If the Fire could get a portion parking-garage-people to transition to non-parking-garage people instead, that's a decent amount of money per event that _could_ go to Fire merch instead (and maybe there's a split with Moda Center there too, dunno).