Parc International is an outdoor venue located in downtown Lafayette where Downtown Alive comes alive on Friday nights and various concerts are held throughout the year. Recently I was here for Patty in the Parc, an annual St. Patrick's Day party, to see Wayne Toups and Better Than Ezra.
So, we had to pay for tickets and got a wristband upon entry. I'm thinking this was cool since it would allow us to come and go into the space as we pleased. More on that later. We arrived early to secure parking (it's downtown so be prepared to pay to park in one of the garages or in a guy's front yard looking to make a few dollars like we did!) and made our way into the space. The first thing I noticed was buying food or drinks were on a ticket system which really made no sense to me whatsoever. We each bought a book of ten which equaled to $10 each. Ok, this should be enough for the night especially since we weren't drinking, right? Here's how the ticket prices went:
Water or soda bottles-3 tickets aka $3
Nachos-5 tickets aka $5
Jambalaya 6 tickets aka $6
Artichoke and crawfish bread bowl 9 tickets aka $9
Excuse me while I bend over. Just around the time we are contemplating going to a restaurant up the street (seriously if I'm going to pay that much for a meal I'd just as well go into a sit down restaurant) it is announced that if you leave reentry is not guaranteed because they were at capacity. Umm, excuse me-what was that? So you are telling me that although we PAID to get in and have a wristband to prove it we are not allowed to even go up the street to get a decently priced soda without the fear that we won't be allowed reentry because YOU GUYS OVERSOLD? I call bullshit. So, because of this reason we were forced to put our tickets together for three drinks and one very overpriced bread bowl leaving us with two worthless tickets. Bullshit.
The place got extremely crowded and while a fun time was had by all it was almost too crowded to move and if dancing is your thing forget about it. Unless you consider standing in one spot doing the head bop dancing. You will not have enough room to shake your tail feather in other words.
Leave your chairs at home, too. Unless your idea of fun is sitting in your chair with random ass in your face and not being able to see the band. read more