So the fact that you have an issue with James being cold towards you translates to "most of the people that work there." I am one of the people that work there. I know all of the people that work there. Should we hug everyone that comes in the door and tell them how much we love them?

James works a lot. He has to deal with some shitty folks. He gets pissy at times. You would too if more than 50% of your clientele were annoying as fuck. You are not the one that gets yelled at. You are not the one that gets spit at. You are not the one that gets swung at. You are the one that gets to drink and have a good time. Sorry if the employees don't share your excitement.

I am not trying to pick on you, I am just pointing out your ignorant statement that "most" of the employees aren't very nice.

Jon

Here's my 2 cents.

First of all, common grounds has always been a great place even when it was back at 1982. I have had tons of friends that have worked there through the years that are great people. For the majority of all the people encountered there over the weekend, they were very nice.

That being said, Jason Rockhill was not nice, nor have I ever known him to be. I watched the entire thing unfold all the way to the point that I was trying to pull Jason's hands from around Decker's neck. Granted this would not have happened if Decker would not have been there, but I saw this coming from the moment I walked in common grounds around 1:30pm and asked Jason,” how are you doing?" and his response was,” what do you need?"

Jason was completely out of line and violent. I don't know what his thing with the club is, (owner/worker) but he really showed his ass. I would say shit happens, but everyone in common grounds that night was friends, and when this shit broke out it was basically 100 people screaming at Jason to stop.

Everyone makes mistakes, trust me I've got my fair share. Jason can fix this if he wants. And knowing him, I highly don't think he will.

if you don't like your job, get a new one. ive never had a problem with any ppl at cg's. in fact, i got something sloppy for 2 of the young boyz that work there.

hey marbs, what do you do there? next time i go there, im just going to wander around mumbling your username.

think about that.

Seriously.

I used to work sound on a regular basis. Now I cover shifts once in a while.

By all means, feel free to mumble my name any time.

Jon

I can understand you being offended when he refers to the staff of Common Grounds as a whole, but i don't think it's baseless, as it's his opinion based on his own experiences. As for protecting the crowd or the equipment, many of the people in the crowd knew Decker and had no problems with him and he was never near the equipment sans the microphone he wanted to sing along into. he was enjoying the band, he wanted to sing along with his friends onstage, this happens at shows all the time. i'm pretty sure he wasn't trying to become 'part of the show.'


As for people having problems with people that work at Common Grounds, i've had at least two in past years and one wasn't even involving Fest.

At Fest 4 (i believe it was), i went to UF with a friend to pick up his girlfriend. Seeing no speed limit signs i assumed the speed limit was 35 and drove under that, was eventually pulled over, and had my license run. The officer said my license was suspended and that i was driving a stolen vehicle, even though it wasn't stolen and my license wasn't suspended (pinellas county decided it wasn't important to let other counties know this). As a result i had to use the tickets to show my proof of age. Most venues had no problem with this except for the Venue and Common Grounds. Jason Rockhill wasn't having any of it and the only way i ended up getting in was because his brother Todd saw I was wearing a Draft shirt i purchased the night before at their set.

Last year, i drove up with three friends from st. pete and we were running late. We ended up getting to common grounds just as the weakerthans were starting their encore. we presented our tickets to James and he said the show was over and wouldn't let us in. We politely explained to him that we drove all the way up to Gainesville from St. Pete, have our tickets with us, and hear the band playing and the least he could do is let us watch the last few songs of a band we love before we'd have to turn right back around and drive to st. pete. Eventually, he begrudgeningly allowed us in.


Aside from Jason and James, I have had no problems with anyone at Common Grounds. All the bartenders and the rest of the staff I've dealt with were all polite, friendly, and courteous.

As far as people having problems with their jobs, you deal with it. I deliver pizzas and accpet the fact that some customers are shitty and horrible tippers and all that. If I didn't brush off the bad customers, I'd carry a negative mentality with me when I deliver to good customers, and would possibly give the wrong impression of myself and the company I work for.
If things like this happen at all the shows, then the workers should know what to expect and know how to deal with it appropriately. They shouldn't have to expect every single person in attendence to be like the one asshole they have a problem with.

This is a joke right? In what world is a speeding ticket a valid form of photo ID? They were making sure their asses were covered. Do you think a liquor store employee would have accepted that ticket as a valid form of identification? It is not Common Grounds' fault that the other venues have lax entrance policies.



I agree, James was a dick for not letting you guys in immediately.



Jon

this is jason rockhill from common grounds and here's my side of it.

dave decker is a problem and has been a problem for us over the years. i've known dave for a long time and at times we get along. but he's got this thing in him that makes him get on stage and hang out for too long. he's been warned about it and his friends have been warned about it. he knows whats up. i'm not going to recount all of our past encounters but he knows what we expect of him.

i'm not against people getting on stage. it happens all the time. but i'm a firm believer in the 3 second rule. which really just means: get on stage do your thing and get off stage quickly. don't hang out and dont make too big of an ass of yourself and everything is cool. we allowed stage diving all weekend long at this Fest and others.

with that out of the way here's my version of the tiltwheel set regarding dave decker:

dave was really drunk and i'm assuming a little coked out too. i honestly doubt he clearly remembers much of what happened and only really knows what went on from what people have told him after the fact. he was pretty far gone. i had an encounter with him a few hours earlier when he and some friends were trying to crash/skip the line and i sent them to the back. and he was well on his way at that point already.

so a few songs into the tiltwheel set dave jumps on from the front of the stage to sing into the mic. after he's done he drunkenly attempts to wander over to a monitor to sit down on it like he's just gonna hang out for a while. i grab his arm and lead him off stage and send him back in the crowd and yell something like "stay off the stage" or "don't get on stage" in his ear as i let him go. he replies "fuck you rockhill"

towards the end of the set he's made his way back to sitting on the stage left front corner of the stage. we make eye contact and i tell him "behave yourself" to which he replies "fuck you rockhill." he's really worked up at this point taking really huge breaths like he's really angry. so he stews there for a little while inching forward always staring/glaring at me. i ask the two girls standing by me to move off to the side and then go to prop the stage door open to make it easier to remove dave from the show because i know its coming... he just has that look in his eye. he jumps up to the mic to sing again and grabs it away from davey and he's still staring at me. someone who i assume is his friend jumps on stage, picks him up and tries to carry him off the front of the stage. which knocks over the mic stand and dave keeps the mic in his hand as he is being pulled off the stage. i run out to grab the mic out of his hand before he gets pulled all the way over. as i take the mic away from him it's "fuck you rockhill" again. i pick the stand back up and put the mic back on it and head back to my post. i see him wrestling with the guy who pulled him off and he's scrambling to get back on stage. i run to the front, jump in and pick dave up in order to take him out the side stage door. after i picked him up some of the crowd tries to stop me. i continue to push through a few more feet and he is taken away from me by some other people. one of whom is russ from the tim version.

at no time were my hands around his neck. my only goal was to pick him up and get him out of there. i never threw a punch though some were thrown at me. this was an attempt to get someone who was out of control out of the show. which has had to happen before with dave.

it's regrettable... but it happened. do i wish it didn't happen, absolutely. but honestly if it happened again it would probably go down the same way. you don't get to pick when people need to be removed. and i fully feel like dave needed to get out of there. he was out of control.

obviously that is a judgement call on my part, but i'm the one at common grounds who has to make that call. i do my best to stay invisible during the course of a show and only step in when i have to. and this is a situation where someone went out of their way to draw attention to themselves.

i apologize that this caused the end of the tiltwheel set which was the final set of a Fest that was mostly problem free at common grounds.

i know that this won't satisfy some people, but that is my take on it.

for the other stuff:

1) you need a valid state issued ID or passport to enter an establishment that serves alcohol. that's the law.

2) the "fight" involving the female employee of common grounds resulted from her catching someone with a flask. the flask guy apparently pushed her and there was a short dust-up. they guy who was thrown out in the above post apparently grabbed the female employee from behind and was taken for part of the flask guys crowd. (you've got an email headed your way soon. i received you email through the website today)

3) the weakerthans ticket thing should never have happened if your facts are correct and you were holding a ticket. i don't have a good reason for that one.

4) i trust my employees and have a great deal of confidence in them, but i do not expect them to be perfect. i don't believe in making excuses like "the Fest is long" etc. but everyone can't be having a good day at the same time. and honestly a good door guy stops a lot of problems from even entering the club. james is a good door guy.

No hat, and yes, beard (but by no means a big one).

Yeah, after they said to me I need to leave the club, I went on the street, and sat on the sidewalk to calm down. Then I said to myself that I wanna send a letter of complaint to the venue. That guy there at the back entrance was extremely rude, when I said that I wanted to get an e-mail adress of the club. He said to me "just fucking google it, man!". It was a shock to be treated like that. After that I kindly asked him if he can provide me a phone number of the club too, and he did that so fast that I just couldn't wrote it down so quickly. I said if he can please do it again, but he replied to me, "are you fucking drunk?!", and grabbed my pen and paper and wrote it down. It was very unprofessional, and rude.

Here's the vid: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BuBlpB9dqSs. I'll take it down if anyone feels it's inappropriate.

It looks to me like the bouncer guy grabs the throat of the guy in the crowd just before J jumped in.

I really enjoyed that Tiltwheel set up until then. Travelling all that distance, and for it to end with that shite (the fight, not the music) really pisses me off. A disappointing end to a great Fest for me. Hangin' with all you guys in Durty Nellys on Saturday night was fantastic. It was great meeting you all.

Con

i understand the concept of proper ID. Without having my driver's license I never tried to buy any drinks at the bars, I just wanted to watch some bands I might never get to see again. I explained why I didn't have ID and what the situation was. I was willing to get 'X's or whatever so the venue didn't need to worry about me trying to buy alcohol with a suspended license ticket. I don't know who would try to use someone else's citation as a form of ID other than the person who received the citation...

I felt bad for whoever was working the exit/porch entrance on Saturday, the line was insanely long most of the day (with that lineup I don't know why people expected anything less) and he seemed to be taking a lot of shit from people because of it for no reason.

CG runs their shit pretty tightly which sucks. The person I was with couldnt get in because she had a bag, and they took my bottle of whiskey from me in the middle of magrudergrind's set. All of which I understand, but no other venue was being that strict.

All the workers seemed pretty cool though. The guy who took my whiskey explained to me what was up, even though I was kind of sloppy drunk and argued with him for about 1 minute, he never turned into an A-hole about and remained really calm.

One of the girls at front door let me through without waiting inline throughout the Magrudergrind-Iron Lung shows because they knew I just needed some fresh air and didnt make me wait in line like I knew they made others.

They also had free water for all their shows, and even gave me a free bottled water when I really needed it. Saturday one of the workers would actually go into the venue and get me water while I waited in line.


Overall very pleased with everyone at CG