Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, April 16, 1993 TAG: 9304160343
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DWAYNE YANCEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
GUNS, GOSPEL 'N' TAXES: WHAT A MIX
TWO OF THE WORLD'S most feared organizations made their presence felt Thursday on Williamson Road. In this lane, taxpayers rushed to the post office to meet the deadline for the IRS. In that lane, rock fans headed to the Guns N' Roses show. Welcome to the Jungle.
They crawled out of their secret hiding places, the thrill-seekers, the risk-takers, the rowdy ones with the wild gleam in their eyes who spend their whole lives living on the edge.
This was the day they've been waiting for, and now that it was finally\ here they cut loose - deliriously shouting their general disrespect for authority to anyone who would listen, then gobbling down pizza and junk food while they kicked off the most frenzied party in all Roanoke.
Yes, it was an ugly side of America that showed itself Thursday night along Williamson Road.
And these were just the law-abiding citizens who drove to the post office to beat the midnight deadline for paying their federal income taxes.
The 11,000 ripped-shirt, leather-jacket rockers filing into see Guns N' Roses at the Roanoke Civic Center across the street were, for the most part, a pretty tame bunch, quietly taking their places in line and waiting for the doors to open.
Looking for troublemakers? Try the Ross Perot organizer passing out literature in front of the post office. He seemed on the verge of fomenting a little tax rebellion, right there on government property.
"Ross Perot and now we know why!" Elliott Wheeler shouted as he went from car window to car window.
"Right on!" one man shouted.
"That's my man!" hollered another.
The way Perot's fans were carrying on in the parking lot, you'd have thought the jug-eared Texan was the one about to come on stage, not the Los Angeles rockers with an "Appetite for Destruction."
"I brought 1,000 of these," Wheeler said, waving his brochures, "and they've been walking out of my hands. I get maybe nine of 10 cars accepting them, and of those, seven or eight are very enthusiastic."
Of course, he admitted, the timing was right - at least for his purposes. For lots of other people who ventured downtown Thursday night, the timing was wrong. Very wrong.
OK, what did you expect? The traffic outside the post office is always a mess on tax night. The IRS said there were 45 million people who waited until the last day to file their taxes, and sometimes it seemed like they had all shown up at Roanoke's main post office at the same time.
Blame George Bush, if you want. His change last year in the withholding rules meant fewer people got refunds this time, so there was little incentive to file early.
Or you can blame some anonymous concert promoter. April 15 this year just happened to be the date that Guns N' Roses - merely the biggest rock band in the cosmos - decided to play across the street.
And that's not all: While the Gunners cranked up in the coliseum, a gospel show was onstage in the auditorium at the other end of the civic center.
A gospel show going head-to-head with Axl Rose and Slash and the boys? You gotta be kidding. Kinda reminds you of one of the Gunners' songs, doesn't it? Right Next Door to Hell.
But Roanokers being the sort of folks they are, everyone seemed to take it all in stride. Some of them had to - preferably big, long strides. When you had to park as far from the civic center as they did, that was the only way to get to the show on time.
Once there, well, that's when the real craziness started.
There were three types of people who found themselves caught in the vortex at Williamson Road and Rutherford Avenue:
Those who were grousing about inflation and a government determined to suck every dime out of their pockets it could.
Those who were laughing and carrying on and trying to mug for the television cameras.
And those who could afford to look at both groups, shake their heads in utter amazement, and walk on by.
The last types were going to the gospel concert. But the other two? Well, don't jump to conclusions.
John Roberts sat outside, watching the sunset. He's in the real estate business part time, and he was talking about how much he had to pay in taxes this year.
"You tax, you tax, you tax and complain about the shape the economy's in. If they didn't tax as much, you'd have more money to put into the economy. If I had $10 more each paycheck, I could spend more, I'd eat out more."
"Wow, man, that's deep," his buddy blurted out.
Roberts, you see, was going to the Guns N' Roses show. Paid his $22.50 for his ticket and drove down from Charlottesville, where he's a college student.
Ask the rockers what was on their minds, and some of 'em started talking about money. Some mentioned the inflated prices of concert tickets. More complained about the new $2 parking fee in the civic center parking lot.
Why were the rock fans so, well, subdued? Virginia Tech student Mike Cullinan shrugged, but he'd noticed it, too. "It seems a little tame. I came to see Garth Brooks and it was wilder then."
"I'm sure it'll get rowdier once everybody gets inside," assured his friend, Steve Boisvert, a student at Virginia Western Community College.
Ah, but across the street - that's where the real action was.
"This is just a big ol' party," proclaimed mail handler Roger Alderman. Sure looked like it.
In the McDonald's lot, K92-FM blasted out a double-duty contest: Lather your car with the phrases "GNR" and "The IRS Sucks" in shaving cream and win some concert tickets.
Postal workers and security guards, their bulging sacks at the ready, stood on the curb, collecting tax returns from motorists driving by. Security guard Billy Lipes even volunteered to stand on the yellow line and work the other side of the street. "I love it," he said, though he couldn't really explain why.
At the post office doors, people lined up for free pizza from Domino's or Payday candy bars being given away by WROV-FM.
"We do this every time," said Linda Woolford, a just-under-the-wire taxpayer who munched on a pepperoni slice with her husband, Greg. "I think it's fun."
Certainly, the post office workers seemed to be having a blast.
"I've been here five years and you start to recognize the same people," Alderman said. "It's a fun day for 'em. They get some free drinks and coffee. They know they're going to be on TV, and the radio people are out here. It's one big picnic."