By all accounts, the last three nights at Croke Park were brilliant. The lads from Dublin came home to accolades and a full house.Then there are those who aren't huge U2 fans.
Last night, a group of local residents blocked the road leading to Croke Park, preventing the tour trucks from reaching the venue so that the enormous stage and all the other equipment could be loaded for a trip to Sweden.
The fans of other groups besides U2 were up in arms because the authorities had allowed a 44 hour period of continuous work. Not only was U2 crating their supplies and hauling them away, but the groundskeepers at Croke Park had to lay a new pitch immediately for the All-Ireland football quarter-finals. Turf needs time to knit new roots, and that doesn't happen overnight.
So the "Bono Who?" crowd blocked the road in protest and U2's road manager broke out in a sweat. His trucks couldn't get in, the stage couldn't get out, and he didn't have the luxury of an extra day to appease the unhappy townspeople.
It wasn't just the trucks, however. Patrick Gates of the Croke Park Area Residents' Alliance was really outraged over the three straight nights of U2. All that racket, bleeding out of the Croker and into his ears. Asking too much of the people, he believed, and then to have another 44 hours on top of that?
Unfortunately, no one thought to hand out free tickets to the locals who were upset. Sorry for the inconvenience, and Bono would personally like to apologize.
He could have taken them aside, backstage, and explained why there had to be three shows and not two, which Mr. Gates thought was reasonable. Bono could have spelled it all out, the income and the expenses and the profit and the loss. Such an elaborate production doesn't pay for itself, after all.
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