press release

[Slashist]

Baz said arresting people for smoking cigerettes, thats just stupid, the firemarshals just wanted to cause headaches.
Huntington has a law that theres no smoking in ANY public buildings, but did they come out and start threatening the band and the fans there? NO they did not.
And yes people smoked, the guards told them to put it out and that was that.
I guess management decided it was better to cancel the show than have tons of fans whisked off to jail, which would have been blamed on Axl I have no doubt.
Blame this cancelled show on Portland Maine officials, I feel it all rests on their shoulders.

no matter what they say no fans would have been "whisked off to jail" they wouldn't have enforced the smoking thing indoors, seems fishy to me.  not saying gnr is lying, could just be bullshit from the fire marshall side of things.

[thesloth]

no matter what they say no fans would have been "whisked off to jail" they wouldn't have enforced the smoking thing indoors, seems fishy to me.  not saying gnr is lying, could just be bullshit from the fire marshall side of things.

Actually that is what Baz is saying and since they named the 2 fire marshels I would say it is  true.  Instead of turning a blind eye or telling people to put it out they said they would kick people out ect.  To me that is bullshit on the fire marshel

Where I live we have a provincial by-law for no smoking in buildings or even at our outdoor staduim.  However when we hosted the Rolling Stones they made an exception and stated that Keith Richards would be allowed to smoke on stage and would not risk any fines ect.   SO yes by-laws can and should be overlooked.  IN this case however they told GnR they would not be overlooking the bylaws and that was the problem

[gnrfreek]

bad move from axl and the management
no, actually... it is the worst move they could have pulled (after not releasing cd offcourse)

[Slashist]

Actually that is what Baz is saying and since they named the 2 fire marshels I would say it is  true.  Instead of turning a blind eye or telling people to put it out they said they would kick people out ect.  To me that is bullshit on the fire marshel

Where I live we have a provincial by-law for no smoking in buildings or even at our outdoor staduim.  However when we hosted the Rolling Stones they made an exception and stated that Keith Richards would be allowed to smoke on stage and would not risk any fines ect.   SO yes by-laws can and should be overlooked.  IN this case however they told GnR they would not be overlooking the bylaws and that was the problem

ya, i know.  same where i live. but they always ignore it for shows.  all i was saying is that people wouldn't end up in jail.

[DemolitionRock77]

And by the way, there has been no response from the Portland fire department saying that the press release was false. My guess is, if the arena was sold out, they would have gone along with the show without pyros, but this was a legitimate reason coupled with the stuff about drinking and smoking so they decided to combine the two shows.

I think it is best that EVERYONE moves on and keeps an open mind about the tour.