About halfway through Lilith Fair last night, my brother Phil and I were estimating the male-to-female ratio of the crowd. I guessed 20:80; he figured it was 10:90. He may have been closer to the right number than I was.
There are advantages for the males in a ratio like that—people-watching is more fun, for example—and of course the whole restroom issue is a no-brainer. The lines for the women’s restrooms at Riverport are always a problem, but last night it looked like it was even worse than usual (mitigated, at least, by the fact that the concert wasn’t a sellout). Of course, for guys, there was no waiting at all.
The men’s restrooms at Riverport have all the urinals in one long room with a couple of huge fans at one end. The fans are so strong that you line up in front of one urinal, and end up peeing in the one next to it. OK, not really, but you get the picture.
The other room has stalls for sittin’. Last night, while most of the men were in the windblown urinal room, there was a fairly steady stream of women invading the men’s restroom to head for the stalls, rather than waiting in the long lines outside the women’s restroom. I don’t think anyone much cared, and anyway, with a ratio like that, who wants to start a fight?