Who Wants to Be a Rigger?

[Malabaristo]

Time for everyone's favorite game: count all the things that are wrong with these pictures!

Though in this case it might be harder to spot something right... This venue is a new winner for scariest place I've worked in to date. I'll be back this weekend and will try to take more and better pictures if I have time. Other highlights include a (probably somewhere around 100 year old) wooden grid, crumbling insulation on pigtails, homemade electrics, and lots more creatively cobbled together bits of rigging.

 

[BillConnerFASTC]

The ladder looks pretty good. What's your complaint? (I like the deflector or skid plate they added to the counterweight to miss the ladder landing - nice touch.)

 

[What Rigger?]

Ratchet straps for the win! This looks a lot like a few theaters I've been in, in and around Ohio. So very interesting to go up to the grid and have a look around, I gotta say.

 

[gafftapegreenia]

Wooden grids are interesting. Scary, and interesting. Old buildings are like that. It's the decades of ad-hoc engineering that really make them deathtraps.


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[josh88]

Ratchet straps for the win! This looks a lot like a few theaters I've been in, in and around Ohio. So very interesting to go up to the grid and have a look around, I gotta say.

Being from ohio, I find myself constantly channeling Winston from Ghostbusters. "I have seen crap that will turn you white."*

*answered that question, we do still have content filters that change words haha

 

[Dionysus]

Rigging and Electrical are both very much examples of the Dunning-Kruger Effect, which I consider part of "The Wizard's First Rule" (in simple terms; People are Stupid).

Add to that the necessity to make do without budget or with the materials at hand and a lot of venues easily become deathtraps.

 

[BillConnerFASTC]

I like the wire ties - wonder if they are holding the spreader plate - as in "the" and not "plates" - in place.

 

[Malabaristo]

Add to that the necessity to make do without budget or with the materials at hand and a lot of venues easily become deathtraps.

That is a big factor at this venue. It's city-owned and has a slightly messy management history. The person managing it now understands that it's unsafe (though he didn't realize just how bad until I started explaining some of it), but he's worried the city will just shut the place down rather than fix things if he starts making noise about the level of danger present.

 

[BillConnerFASTC]

Hundreds if not thousands of this situation across the US.

 

[Dionysus]

Hundreds if not thousands of this situation across the US.

I do believe just about everywhere, not just the US Bill. I know I've seen enough in Canada, even after more and more requiring engineer's drawings and inspections.

Heck for a truss structure for lights only at a small festival you require a stamped drawing and inspection.

 

[Wheezy]

Is that electrical cable run up the inside of the ladder in the second pic?

 

[BillConnerFASTC]

I do believe just about everywhere, not just the US Bill. I know I've seen enough in Canada, even after more and more requiring engineer's drawings and inspections.

Heck for a truss structure for lights only at a small festival you require a stamped drawing and inspection.

Its not the new ones - its all those from 30-100+ years ago - not maintained. Now, manual counterweight does pretty well without maintenance - not that I'm recommending that - but motorized will just stop working and the same ham handed people who could coach manual to work - even if scary - will try to fix motorized - and they won't know how critical each piece is to just holding a load. We are in for some unpleasant surprises.