New Socadrome layout disappoints patrons

PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

pe­ter.christo­[email protected]

So­cadrome pa­trons who sat in the stands felt short­changed yes­ter­day, as the new Car­ni­val Tues­day lay­out left some of them with lim­it­ed to no view of the ac­tion at Port-of-Spain’s al­ter­na­tive mas stage.

The So­cadrome again at­tract­ed some of Car­ni­val’s most pop­u­lar bands, along with many of T&T’s most fa­mous faces, with Bri­an Lara, Dwight Yorke and Richard Thomp­son among those cross­ing the stage, which was lo­cat­ed be­tween the Jean Pierre Com­plex and the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um.

Pa­trons al­so saw Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath play­ing mas in Bliss, while Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der toured the venue with Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro and his se­nior of­fi­cers.

How­ev­er, while pa­trons in the bleach­ers to the east of the stage had a clear van­tage point of the ac­tion, those who got seat­ing in the out­er ring of the sec­ond lev­el of the sta­di­um had lit­tle vis­i­bil­i­ty of the pre­sen­ta­tions.

“Worst So­cadrome I ever wit­nessed,” said An­nette Charles.

Cheryl Cox, seat­ed next to Charles, al­so shared her frus­tra­tion.

“I don’t know what the gov­ern­ment try­ing to do with our Car­ni­val and tourists in town. You know it have plen­ty tourist com­ing in, here not big enough to hold every­body,” said Cox.

Car­los Wil­son was al­so dis­pleased with the ac­com­mo­da­tion for So­cadrome pa­trons.

“It’s re­al­ly dif­fer­ent from what we are ac­cus­tomed to. Now I’m up­stairs here, but I re­al­ly can­not see much in terms of the whole mas ex­pe­ri­ence com­ing on­to the stage and now you have less move­ment, less space and we still in sta­di­um.

“We still in the sport­ing fa­cil­i­ty, so if we had the orig­i­nal part where they had more con­trol and more seat­ing ac­com­mo­da­tion for the peo­ple, but right now I am wait­ing to go out­side, be­cause it re­al­ly not mak­ing much sense,” Wil­son said.

Even mas­quer­aders ex­pressed their dis­plea­sure with the So­cadrome set­up while cross­ing the stage.

The al­ter­ations by the So­cadrome or­gan­is­ers were brought on by re­fur­bish­ment at the site.

So­ca star Machel Mon­tano at­tempt­ed to raise the vibe of those seat­ed on the sta­di­um’s sec­ond lev­el by en­gag­ing them di­rect­ly while per­form­ing En­core on top of a truck in Tribe at the So­cadrome. His Road March com­peti­tor Voice al­so emerged on the sub­se­quent truck to per­form Cyah Be­have but both Bliss and Tribe had crossed the So­cadrome to En­core, while us­ing Voice’s of­fer­ing and Bun­ji Gar­lin’s Still A Road Man to hype mas­quer­aders on stage.

The So­cadrome al­so saw a suc­cess­ful mar­riage pro­pos­al, as An­drea Hill said yes to Jonathan Man­nion, as Mon­tano re­peat­ed­ly urged the ju­bi­lant mas­quer­aders to “Gih Dem” in the back­ground.