Report: OZZFEST Brawl Ridiculous, Shameful

A MyFOXColorado blogger who goes by the name "Scribe2" has issued the following report:

The Ozzfest at Coors Amphitheatre [in Denver, Colorado] on July 28 erupted into an absolutely ridiculous and shameful war of thrown items between the lawn-seat visitors and the reserved-seat visitors during the STATIC-X set. [See video footage below.]

Plastic bottles, plastic cups, plastic "yard" glasses and chunks of turf were hurled from primarily mid-lawn as far as a third of the width of the second orchestra section. A few shoes and other items were also observed in flight. The fracas took on an especially sinister note when half-full bottles and empty bottles and cups were jammed full with sod, creating dangerous missiles.

It was a shameful display of bad behavior and a ridiculous endangerment to fellow concert-goers. A fun afternoon of music and revelry became an interesting experience I would never place myself in a position to repeat. By some good luck it didn't result in full-fledged rioting or morbid casualties. There were certainly enough alcohol and other mind-altering substances about to have led it that way. The amphitheatre management lucked out.

The details as I saw them follow.

It started with a few bottles and cups being tossed into the seats from the lawn. They were mostly ignored or met by glares. However, crowd-think set in and the casual provocations became a hail of detritus from above. The people in the seats responded as comes naturally: in kind. So began an unstated war of the classes.

My younger adult son, trying to ignore the first volleys of detritus while sitting in his seat took a partially-filled bottle of water, thankfully capless, right between the eyes and ended up with a (thank goodness) minor gash. Even as I tended to his wound, a rain of bottles and sod fell on and around me, most of it deflected by my six-foot-tall elder son's skillful bat-and-catch. My daughter-in-law, a delicate petite, took a number of hits as well. It was infuriating and appalling.

The first impulse was to pitch back, to "give them a taste of their own medicine." That proved to be the worst policy, as it a) returned weapons to a bunch of riled-up drunks to be chucked down again and b) brought us down to their level. Our group of four quickly abandoned the stupid reactionary response and took shelter as best we could against the dividing wall. We still found ourselves fending off short-fires from both directions, but it was better than had we remained at our center-section seats as the near-riot escalated.

Read the entire report at www.myfoxcolorado.com.