How many people were really there?

August 4, 2006 7:13 AM

I'm looking for examples of large public events where the number of people who "say" they attended is well above the capacity of the venue. Do you have any stories?

My memory is very dim here but it seems like there is a great baseball story in which almost 100,000 people claim they saw Babe Ruth and his famous "Called Shot" when in fact Wrigley can't hold nearly that many people.

Does anyone have examples (documented or otherwise) of this type of anecdote?

posted by dhacker to society & culture (21 comments total)

There are millions who claim to have attended Woodstock.
posted by beachhead2 at 7:16 AM on August 4, 2006

I think a lot of outdoor events (rallies, protests, festivals, parades and concerts) are routinely exaggerated in terms of attendance.

Woodstock is a great example. The Glastonbury Festival, Altamont, Isle of Wight, and Monterey Pop Festival all spring to mind as well.

The WTO riots in Seattle or the FTAA riots in Quebec City are others (at least in North America) that I've heard numerous people say they attended and I know full well that they were not there. People like to believe that they were part of something big or momentous.
posted by purephase at 7:30 AM on August 4, 2006

The Tompkins Square Park "riots" of 1990 (?) in New York City. Not super large, but locally famous.
posted by scratch at 7:38 AM on August 4, 2006

The British magazine Private Eye has a "number-crunching" section where they juxtapose statistics to intriguing effect. From memory, they had:

5 BILLION: potential viewers of Live 8, say the organisers.
3 BILLION: have access to electricity.
posted by cogat at 7:40 AM on August 4, 2006

cogat, that's a great one. is any of that online?
posted by dhacker at 7:50 AM on August 4, 2006

The number of people who claim they were at the first Sex Pistols show.
posted by milkrate at 8:51 AM on August 4, 2006

Green Day's free concert at the Hatch Shell in Boston, 1994.

Everyone claims to have attended that concert. Now, that's an outdoor venue where capacity isn't really an issue, and I can verify that it really was mobbed and that nearly every subway car I encountered was overcrowded (and fishbowled) — but really, to this day, every time you mention the concert, anyone within earshot will chime in, "Yeah, I was there."

(If you don't know the story: A minor riot broke out during the concert. The band left early, a few people were injured, and the negative publicity that resulted from thousands of unsupervised teenagers causing havoc in the city put an end to free concerts at the Hatch Shell for a couple of years.)
posted by cribcage at 8:56 AM on August 4, 2006

Beautiful article about Ted Williams' last at-bat at Fenway by John Updike here. Only 10,453 people in attendance, but I'm pretty sure everyone in New England over the age of 50 attended (my grandfather included...)
posted by one_bean at 8:56 AM on August 4, 2006

I was at that Green Day show. Actually.
posted by one_bean at 8:57 AM on August 4, 2006

See?
posted by cribcage at 9:01 AM on August 4, 2006

When the Sex Pistols came to Atlanta for what was a very early tour date for them in the US. A lot more people than could fit into that venue claim to have been there. (I can't Google Sex Pistols from work, so unfortuately must leave that to you).
posted by Medieval Maven at 9:18 AM on August 4, 2006

I remember reading a newspaper article (likely the Chicago Tribune) about how crowd estimates are made. I believe it was specifically in reference to how the police estimated attendance at the Taste of Chicago (an outdoor festival). Naturally, I can't find it now. But a google search using "crowd estimates police" found a few potentially helpful hits. (I realize this is not exactly what you are asking, but it may give you some data.)

Crowd Counts - Art, Science and Guesswork

How do the police make crowd estimates?

War Protest Numbers

In Chicago, I rarely run into a music fan of a certain age who was not at Stevie Ray Vaughan's last show at Alpine Valley...
posted by SuperSquirrel at 9:57 AM on August 4, 2006

Wilt Chamberlain's 100 point game - http://www.nba.com/sixers/news/wilt_40_020302.html. Only 4124 actually there but many more claimed to be.
posted by TheRaven at 10:00 AM on August 4, 2006

How many people have been to Hershey, really? I have, but...

Great point, TheRaven.
posted by The Michael The at 10:20 AM on August 4, 2006

Not to use another Sex Pistols example, but the first time they played Manchester in '76.

Hundreds, or I've heard thousands of people claim they've attended, despite filmed evidence to the contrary. (Mick Hucknall, Morrissey, and the soon-to-be members of Joy Division were all in attendance, however, that much is certain).
posted by incomple at 10:29 AM on August 4, 2006

(Along with many other far cooler people, like Howard Devoto and Mark E. Smith, of the Buzzcocks/Magazine and the Fall respectively, but those mentioned were just the few that came to mind)
posted by incomple at 10:37 AM on August 4, 2006

As a fly in the ointment: I've always thought that these sort of complaints are meaningless. They're urban myths. If you a large number of people attend an event, you are likely to encounter many of them throughout the course of your lifetime, especially if you live near where the event took place. I'd be willing to wager that there are no documented instances of the sort of thing you're looking for. Seriously.
posted by jdroth at 10:57 AM on August 4, 2006

jd,

Interesting point and I think I agree.
posted by dhacker at 11:49 AM on August 4, 2006

Related:
March organizers estimated the crowd size at between 1.5 and 2 million people while the United States Park Police officially estimated the crowd size at 400,000. The Park Police figure was the figure reported widely by U.S. mass media but both figures were discredited by a subsequent Boston University study. Farrakhan threatened to sue the National Park Service due to the controversial low estimate from the Park Police. After the Million Man March, the Park Police decided to discontinue providing official crowd estimates.

Three days after the march, Dr. Farouk El-Baz and a team of ten research associates and graduate students at the Center for Remote Sensing at Boston University released an estimate of 870,000 people in with a margin of error of about 25 percent, which meant the actual size of the crowd at that time could have been as low as 650,000 or as high as 1.1 million. They arrived at this figure by enlarging aerial photographs taken by the Park Service and counting crowd density.

They later revised that figure to 837,000 +/- 20%, or from 670,000 to 1,004,000. This revision was made when the Park Service provided original 35mm negatives; the first count was made with scanned printed photographs.
posted by zoinks at 2:22 PM on August 4, 2006

The Million Man March is just an example, though. The attendance of pretty much every march in DC is contested.

Also, I think I've heard people refer to the phenomenon you're asking about with regards to the Stonewall Riots, but can't find anything about it right now. And yeah, not sure there would be any properly "documented" instances of this.
posted by zoinks at 2:29 PM on August 4, 2006

It's a given, I'm told, that the number of people in Times Square for New Year's Eve will be 4 to 8 times the number of people who can physically fit between the buildings, even if they're all having sex at the time, but that's not quite what you're looking for.

Overinflated crowd estimates are common, though.
posted by baylink at 3:20 PM on August 4, 2006