talk about a shitstorm brewing

the trib reported today that dave matthews' bus is under fire again. not only are they handling suit from the city of the chi, but now the tour boat company is joining in the fun. if you missed the drama from this summer, it's alleged that mr. matthews' longtime driver dumped about 80 lbs. of human waste from their tour bus as it was crossing over the kinzie street bridge downtown, right onto the heads of unknowing passengers in a tour boat below. now, i have a finicky repulsion to even sharing a common wall in a public bathroom with someone unseen on the other side, but i cannot imagine the barf-o-rama that must have ensued after this poop swabbed the deck. i wouldn't think that the chicago river was too pleased to be lapping up the excrement from that schlocky band either.

read on for the firsthand skinny.


--------------------'People sat in stunned anger' --------------------

August 10, 2004, 1:07 PM CDT

Tribune staff reporter Brett McNeil, who filed Monday's report on the foul liquid that drenched passengers on a Chicago tour boat, was one of those passengers. Here's his first-person account.

Mostly what I remember is people gagging.Before that, I remember our lightly lisping docent say what a beautiful day it was to catch the city's river bend reflection on the green glass of 333 W.Wacker Drive. And, really, it was: just this cool and sunny day with billowy white-gray clouds floating in a deep blue sky.We were puttering along the Chicago River, watching paddlers from the FlatwaterClassic float by, craning to see the tops of sundry architectural marvels. A perfectly polite, boringly edifying way to spend the afternoon. And then came a gush of goop raining across most of the upper-deck viewing platform. From where I was seated, toward the front of the boat, I couldn't see what was dumping on us but figured it was a street cleaner or maybe one of those landscaping trucks that you see spraying arcs of water into the median weed beds along Ashland Avenue. Somehow I got just the lightest little splash on my left shirt sleeve, while people two seats away were left squeezing gritty gunk from their sticky wet hair. We passed under the bridge and the deluge seemed to pick up, getting stronger as the passengers toward the rear of the boat approached the waterfall. The stuff splat heavily on the deck, dousing dozens of white-haired ladies and gents in nylon windbreakers. There was confusion.Then the smell hit us. An unmistakable stink: porta-potty juice. "Oh, God." The woman next to me turned and said to no one, "I had my mouth open."Another woman, whose white shirt was soaked in what looked like dirty wiper fluid, said nothing. She just stood up and surveyed the boat, her eyes registering what she was now wearing. Reflexively, she began heaving. She looked like she was drowning.The docent was slow to understand the magnitude of what had happened. "It appears that some water has hit the boat," he said, ridiculously. A guy from the back of the boat shouted: "That's not water, buddy! That's urine!"The docent, still playing dullard, asked, "Should we go back?"By then, though, the boat's crew was rushing in with wet naps and paper towels, and soon we were turning around and plowing back to dock in high gear. Damning the no wake zone, we sent recreational boaters splashing in our wake as Chicago's Little Lady churned for home. People wiped off their glasses, took off their coats, and sat in stunned anger.What could you do? I was on the boat with my girlfriend and a friend of hers visiting from out of town. They, too, managed to avoid the worst of it and we hustled down into the boat's main cabin. There we could avoid the stench up top but could clearly hear people puking in the nearby bathrooms.We sat downstairs, hugging the air-conditioner register for stench-free air, until back at the Michigan Avenue dock. I did not begin reporting about all this until after we'd gone to the Billy Goat Tavern and washed up in the bathrooms, which was a mistake. Because I wanted to get my hands and face and hair clean, I didn't get the name of the guy who was standing on the sidewalk when I got off the boat wearing only his waterlogged khakis. Stripped to the waist, he was actually joking with a woman airing out her wet red dress. "I feel like I'm in a bad Ben Stiller movie," he said.

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