Concerts & Commerce Inner City Priorities

Rip It Up, Issue 89, 1 December 1984, Page 4

Concerts & Commerce Inner City Priorities

Russell Brown

The Aotea Square riot and accompanying media attention will only serve to further alienate youth from society, according to record retailer and member of the Queen St Retailers' Association, Michael Dow, who witnessed events from atop a city building. “In less than a week we've had a media hype about trouble at the Deep Purple concert, where the only problems actually occured outside the concert and now this," he said. “The media is turning public feeling against youth and music which is just rubbish.” While the actions of the rioters could in no way be excused, he said the police must take some of the blame, for assembling in riot gear behind a largely peaceful crowd and for stopping the concert. “The focal point was obviously on the stage and when the music stopped the people turned around and saw all these riot police with helmets and batons right behina them. And too many young people have seen things like Straw Dogs and it exploded. “We talked to some of the kids later and they said under normal circumstances it would have been alright but seeing these guys in helmets they said they’d never felt that way before, they just went mad.” While he said that “in generai the police looked after themselves very well, glass. The whole sorry incident could have been avoided in one way by, as has been suggested, the banning of alcohol at the concert. But to many who were there the disorder would not have escalated if police conduct had been sensitive and appropriate to the overwhelmingly peaceful mood of the concert. Coming up the middle of

obviously their resources weren’t that strong the guys on the beat were great,” the decision to split the mob and drive it the length of Queen St, where shops were devastated obviously hadn't been in the interests of retailers. “I'm concerned about the repercussions both as a retailer and as a lover of Auckland,” Mr Dow said. He said he would be meeting with Triple M representatives to try and establish a different kind of link with the city’s young people and try and stop something similar happening again. “The city fathers don’t understand youth most of them are geriatrics. Some, like Cath Tizard, are doing all they can but there’s not really much communication. There's a big gap between young people and the police too." Mr Dow said the most useful thing Queen St retailers could do to prevent similar incidents would be to each contribute S2OO towards the setting up of some kind of “not so bureaucratic” means of communication with young people. “The solution is not to continue depriving people of their rights," he said. “It’s not different from a business problem you identify the problems, find the causes and then come up with solutions. We can’t afford to go the other way and risk teenagers being virtually banned from the inner city. RB Queen St and assembling across the main exit from the square was akin to setting themselves up as pins in a bowling alley. Some of the crowd simply took up the challenge. The actions of the rioters were unquestionably selfish but then the last half dozen years have been increasingly selfish times.