I agree. Nissan Pavilion is dead to me.

Live Nation, Cellar Door, etc. book popular acts to appear at Nissan because it has the largest capacity of any outdoor venue in the DC Metro region. They know fans will get suckered-in and travel to Bristow, VA to see a big name against their better common sense. Even fans (like me) who have been burned time and time again by the Nissan experience foolishly give it another try to see their favorite band, Radiohead. They can make more money at Nissan than they can at better venues like Merriwether Post. Period.

Nissan Pavilion is flawed in every major aspect except acoustics. It’s just a bit too far out of reach for DC metro. It’s only accessible by one road. There are two routes that can take you to that road, and both of those routes run through suburban residential neighborhoods. The parking lots have 1/10 of the access openings than they should. So a trip to Nissan inevitably ends in an unbearable torture of bottleneck.

I have said this before, but May 11th 2008 will be the absolute last time I get suckered in by Nissan. There was construction forcing all roads down to one lane into and out of Nissan between the venue and Route 66. As I mentioned above, there’s only two routes to get to the one road into Nissan, and one of those routes was closed last night due to flooding. It might have been a little better without the flooding, but not by bloody much. Factor in the lack of local police assistance, the unwillingness to open things up more to accomodate the fans, and the general retardedness of the Northern Virginia highway system, and last night was beyond unbearable.

The only way we are going to see any sort of justice in this situation is a complete boycott of Nissan Pavilion. We have to mount an initiative to spread the word and prevent music fans from caving on this. We are the reason these bands succeed. They perform to see us, not the other way around. We have to use our voice to be heard. BOYCOTT NISSAN PAVILION!!!

After all, most of you could have driven to Baltimore from DC, or PHILADELPHIA for that matter and had less time in the car than we had last night. What a sad, horrible debacle.

Left Silver Spring at 6pm. What should have been 45 mins took 2 hours just to even get to the EXIT off the 66. Another 1 and 1/4 hour to drive 1 mile to the venue and to get routed around it. My buddy and I hopped out of the car to run to the venue while my fiance parked. We were frozen mud pops by the time we made it in. I couldn’t even bring myself to buy a beer because it would have frozen to my hand. You’d think leaving Silver Spring at 6 would at least get us there BEFORE Radiohead started.. but nope. We walked into the middle of the first part and stayed for about half an hour and just couldn’t take it anymore. My fiance forgot where we left the car so my small group split up and spent an hour trecking through near freezing mud rivers to find our car.

I never thought waiting over an hour in a car to get out of a parking lot would ever be such heaven. Three of us stripped down and blasted the heat.

I’ve seen radiohead a couple times before. What really upset me is that it was my buddy’s first time seeing them. Normally their concerts were just brilliant (i.e. 2003 @ Merriwether)… but this was just a complete spoil for him.

Nissan and Live Nation should be ashamed, ABSOLUTELY ASHAMED of themselves. Rain or shine is one thing. Proceeding with a concert with half the roads getting there are ALREADY flooded and getting worse, and NOT cancelling it is just plain irresponsible.

It would be nice if Radiohead swung back aroun later this year and reserved tickets for us suckered by Nissan by purchase before selling to the general public.

Any place would have been nicer than Nissan. Merriwether is way better than Nissan. RFK has descent sound and metro access.

I’m suprised no one died.

You are clearly a hardcore Radiohead fan. Best experience of your life? Congrats!

There appears to be a timing issue between our experiences (and possibly an age/experience/time-is-money issue). While I arrived at 6:30 and stood in the cold, wind, and rain for 3 1/2 hours, you were still in your car. You saw Radiohead play while I heard a crappy opening band as well as pelting rain on the hood of my jacket. Like a victim with his chest open in an ER, there comes a time when you just have to call it. I was happy to be home tucked under my warm covers while others were fighting their way out of a muddy parking lot.

Like I said, Radiohead is one of my favorite bands so yes I went so that I could say (to myself) that I’d seen them, but I also went because I love their music. Just not enough to risk hypothermia and/or pneumonia.