Not taking any chances this time, Richard Tillit and Angie Ahake set camp outside the fence Thursday night at Pioneer Park to watch the second concert of the summer Twilight series.
“We just like to be able to stretch out and we thought there might not be enough room,” Tillit said.
“It was so crowded last week and we didn’t want to take too much room,” said Ahake, who is pregnant and didn’t want to be among a rowdy crowd.
But this week’s free concert, featuring Memory Tapes and Pittsburgh artist Gregg Gillis, aka Girl Talk, wasn’t nearly as packed.
Twilight officials estimated the crowd at 20,000 people, half of the number from the first week’s concert, which featured Modest Mouse.
“We have a lot of people down here but we are not bursting at the seams,” said Casey Jarman, director of the series, shortly after 8 p.m. “We made a lot of improvements to the layout, which I think has been very helpful.”
After facing an unprecedented number of attendees last week, organizers made sure they were better prepared the second time around.
Changes included adding more space to the venue by moving the fence about 75 feet farther south and by moving craft vendors from the center of the venue to the park’s south end; and relocating food vendors from an open area, where people stand or sit to watch the show, to the north end of the park. The VIP privacy screening was removed from the fence to create more visibility; the venue has now four entrances, along with five exits; and additional portable restrooms were brought in and situated on the park’s east and west ends.
Jarman said the new layout allows concert-goers to use the space better and appreciate the venue’s qualities.
Unlike last week, there were not long lines of people waiting to get in. The evening started slowly. Madison Martin and her group of friends drove from Park City for the concert. They wondered whether the show was on or not because of how few people they saw when they arrived early.
By the time the main act Girl Talk took the stage (accompanied by about 20 people from the crowd as backup dancers), the evening had picked up.
Along the southeast entrance, one security guard said the flow was a lot better and no one was knocking down fences like last week.
Salt Lake City police Officer A. Nicolaysen, who stood at the northwest entrance, said the crowd was smaller and staff was better prepared.
After Thursday’s concert, Jarman and his staff will meet again to go over the evening’s event. “It’s kind of like a football team getting ready to play every week. That one is behind us. We’ve got to get ready for the next one and make it better,” Jarman said.
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