Metrodome crowds

Working near the Metrodome as I do, I often encounter crowds of people and vehicles as I am on my way to work. I usually don't know what's going on at the Metrodome when I see the swarming people and more often than not my reaction is "Son of a bitch. These people need to get out of my way." (Dome-goers have no respect for "Don't Walk" signals and jaywalking laws.)

After driving into this situation many times, I've been able to flesh out a pretty detailed profile of the different crowds that come downtown for the different Metrodome events.

For example, today, I drove past and saw bunches of people, mostly male, with snowmobile-type jackets and stocking caps. They all looked like they came from Anoka. A few of them had kids (well-fed kids with very short haircuts, mostly) and and even fewer were accompanied by women. What could this event be? The Vikings and Gophers are done playing. My guess was some kind of snowmobile show. Well, turns out I was close. It was the monster truck rally.

Other common events come with telltale crowds. A brief rundown:

Vikings games are the easiest to peg. That's because there are the most cars and the most people and they're almost all wearing Vikings jerseys, often bearing the names and numbers of players who have long since left the team. (Dude, your Doleman jersey may have bee cool in the early '90s, but it's time to get with it.) Vikings fans also are the most likely to drive monstrous pickups and SUVs. The parking lots look as if Denny Hecker has rolled in and set up some kind of special exhibition of the newest and biggest ways to spend $35,000 and get 8 miles to the gallon.

Gophers games are also easy. They are notable because they have the second-highest proportion of large vehicles and the widest age spread among their fan base. You have a lot of college students and you have a lot of really old people who show up wearing their maroon and gold. I figure these old folks are either parents of the students participating in the games, or they are pathetic alumni clinging to some tenuous connection with their alma mater. As far as I can see, there is very little interest in Gopher football from the 25-50 crowd.

The Twins crowd is slightly different. There are generally more women in these crowds and the fans are generally a little more civil than the Vikings marauders who leave their broken beer bottles and trash all over downtown. Sadly, Twins fans are not immune to the outdated-jersey phenomenon. I don't understand why anybody would have bought a Mientkiewicz jersey in 2002, and I really don't understand why anybody would still be wearing one now.

Then there are the home and garden shows. This is a whole different set of people. They look just how you'd expect: A little older, a little more domestic, and generally a little more urban than the sports crowds. They're also much more sparse and hard to notice because they are coming and going all day.

And sometimes you have a totally out-of-left-field crowd. One day there were a bunch of tour buses lined up and a lot of tattooed and pierced people loitering about. What the hell could this one be? I got into work and checked; turned out the Van's Warped Tour was in town. And once there was this crowd of people in what appeared to be extravagant costumes. That one was some kind of Hmong new year celebration.