I have seen many shows at Dickens because they have booked some excellent bands and had a decent experience until recently. The experience was bad enough that I will now drive to Edmonton to see bands if they are only playing at Dickens in Calgary. My experience involved a theft (someone snatching items and pick pocketing). Security did nothing to stop it, the door man did nothing to stop it. I understand they don't want to get injured and don't get paid enough to deal with that, however, the treatment we received by the door man after the theft occurred was unexpected. As we ran out of the club to see where the thieves were running, we contacted the police to report the theft. The police were there quickly and left the area to look for the suspects and the police officer told us to call the station immediately and file a report with the description. The police on the phone asked if there was video footage of the suspects entering and leaving the club. I asked the door man this and he said 'it's not our problem your items were stolen'. I told him the police are asking because they want to review the footage to identify the suspects, again the door man said 'we're not responsible, it's too busy in here for us to watch everyone, you should've been more careful'. Not once did we accuse the bar of being responsible, we were just relaying information that the police wanted to know if they had footage and wanted to review it. This was the police's decision to do an investigation of a criminal act and he was telling us they weren't going to provide footage based on he believed it was our fault the items were stolen. Not his decision to make. We did finally talk to the owner to pass on the information that the constable would be in contact with him to review footage and he seemed like he was going to co-operate. In the scheme of things, theft of property is minimal considering what could go down, but the experience opened my eyes that as a patron, if something more serious were to occur, they definitely don't have your back and it's in a pretty sketchy area. I personally no longer feel safe going to Dickens. The second thing that I found unnerving was the aftermath of this. We posted on the Dickens Facebook page to the people that did this please return the items, no questions asked, as one items was very important/sentimental. They removed the comment from their page. I don't understand why they would take issue with someone reaching out with this request. The only thing I can think of is because they don't want people knowing this incident occurred at all. read more