There
are so many things that I never knew about.
Last
night I was talking to some employees of the Gillette Stadium up in
Foxboro. One was a manager for security and the other an event
coordinator for the corporate boxes. Both had some great stories.
The
event coordinator opened my eyes to the amount of money that's spent
at Gillette. His job is to make sure the corporate box is fully
stocked with anything, and I mean anything they want and need for the
game. He told me that it's not just games they use them for. If the
owner of the box wants to use it a three AM on a January night, they
can.
“I'll
get a list of what the sponsors want and I have to find it, get it or
somehow procure it for the day's event. Whatever the client wants, we
get it, but we charge them for it, even if it's a bag of popcorn.”
“One
time, I had to find a case of Jean-Marc XO
Vodka, which is distilled nine times and costs $50 a bottle, a case
is $300. We charge them $1,000 for it, since we're getting it and
setting it up. I tried it. There is no vodka smell and goes down like
water. I kid you not.”
“They'll pay that
much?” I ask.
“Oh sure, they have
the bucks. We constantly have caviar set ups all the time. We'll
whack them hard on that, but they are entertaining people, so caviar
they get. The tips they leave behind at the end of the day for the waitstaff can easily
run past $2,000, if they're good and drunk during the game. If some
guy wants us to run down stairs to get him a six-pack of shit
Budweiser beer, we'll hit him for $40, and they pay
it.”
He tells me a corporate
box costs $1 million and you have to lease it out for a term of eight
years. That's not including everything you want for that box. Food,
chefs, waitstaff, bar tenders and runners to find you a pack of
Marlboros. So it easily runs past $8 million in the course of their
lease.
“Any great stories?”
I ask
“Well, I can't name
the pharmaceutical company, but they're sort of based near 128. We
had to let in some guy from the Latin Kings who was supplying them
with cocaine and there were these three Russian girls, about 20 years
old, if that, who we had to escort to the box. The box owners then
kicked me out and the waitstaff for about an hour. You can guess what
happened.”
“Rich frat boy party,
huh?” I say.
He goes on. “Yeah,
partying with the best-est and most-est. We're told by management to
look the other way and keep quiet. To tell you the truth, most of the
corporate parties are boring affairs. A lot of these guys are so
uptight that loosening their tie during a game is as about as far as
they go...Then there's the occasional crazy party, like the
pharmaceutical one I managed.”
*****
The only time I saw a
corporate box is looking up at one while at the stadium. I'm just
another serf sitting in the cheap seats.
*****
The other guy was one
of the heads of security at Gillette. He tells me you can't pick your
nose without them recording that to a DVD. He says every inch of the
property is covered by cameras and they record it all.
“One day, we got a
complaint from a women who was at a concert and she had lost her
diamond ring. We knew where she sat because the tickets have bar
codes and are scanned as you enter. We know where you sat, who you
are, where your from and which event you attended...alot of
information. So I had them pull all the security DVDs from where she
sat and we went through them. Our cameras can read the date on a
dime in lousy lighting if they have to.”
“Anyways, we go
through the recordings and my guy tells me he spotted the diamond
ring being picked up by one of our own security staff and then
pocketing it. I called this guy in and told him, 'You have one chance
to keep your job, hand up the ring.' He did.”
I ask him what sucks
about the job and he tells me the PC problems. PC, “protective
custody” is where they drag all the drunks, kids ripped on booze
and ecstasy to a holding area where they have EMT's watch you to see
if your about to die or just need to dry out a bit. He hates it
because alot of drunks are just belligerant children.
“It's the baby
sitting part of the job, if they're on our property, they're our
children and we have to keep them safe.”
He said he's done
security for many venues across the US. I ask him which was the best
and he surprised me with an answer that had nothing to do with
security.
“Red Rocks outside of
Denver.”
Now I've heard of Red
Rocks. It's a natural ampitheater. Nature carved out this bowl in
mountain rock and it lends itself to a stage and an audience.
“You could be on
stage at Red Rocks, speak out some words, like your name...and
without amplification, it'll naturally be heard in the cheap seats
way up top.”
He tells me he's also a
bit of a nature nut, hiker, camper and his time spent in Denver was
his best. The mountains aren't that far and the whole area is just
begging you to have fun outside.
“Not only is it
beautiful, the Colorado crowd that usually attends the venues
aren't assholes like we are on the East Coast. They just want to see
the show and I didn't have a lot of problems with drunks, fights or
the like compared to Gillette....and don't get me started on the
security problems at Comcast/Great Woods either. You have no idea how
lousy it is to control at crowd at Great Woods, it's not set up for
security in the least, it's wide open and the kids do whatever the
hell they want.”
He says he'd love to go
back to Colorado but Red Rocks isn't large enough to provide the
income from a job like at Gillette.
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| Red Rocks Ampitheater |
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