Phish was on the front page of The Des Moines Register on Tuesday, Oct. 5. Some of you may have read it. It’s a pretty sad situation.

You have 11,000 people, about 40 or so get busted for possession, making hash, selling, whatever … that’s less than 5 percent.

The police’s time is better spent elsewhere fixing the “real” problems this country has.

On the front page, there is a picture of two undercover cops wrestling down a concert-goer.

The headline reads, “Phish heads Raise Ruckus in Ames.”

What kind of word is “ruckus?” Shouldn’t it read “Ames Police Raise Ruckus in Ames?”

The Ames police chief is trying to get Phish and the “Phish heads” banned from Ames.

The director of security for the Iowa State Center said that he wasn’t “hooked” on the police chief’s ideas.

He said he and his staff called previous Phish venues and received no reports of problems.

He also said, “If Phish is banned, this will be the first time a band has been prohibited from returning to any of ISU’s facilities”.

Let’s face it. This is the Midwest. Most of the Midwest is conservative. The police chief obviously took Phish coming to Ames as a notch in his belt. This is purely a PR-move.

Still, what a crock. ZZ Top and Skynyrd will be in Ames on Oct. 23.

It will be interesting, considering that there will probably be just as much drug-use in and around that particular event as there was at the Phish show.

I can almost guarantee you that Skynyrd and ZZ Top will not be patrolled nearly as closely.

The reason for this is that the dominant portion of the audience that attends those types of concerts is the same generation as the cops busting Phish shows.

They will lose respect and admiration from their old-fashioned and quite dense peers if they bust up a ZZ Top concert.

It is a sad world, but it is our responsibility to change it by voting for younger and fresher minds and living our life with a new and bright outlook for the future.

Would the APD be more open-minded if Phish heads just took a bath?

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Paul Richards

Resident

Des Moines