Kristin Macfarlane: Winter is not for staying home to keep warm

The crowd at the 25th PolnRock music festival (former Woodstock Stop) Kostrzyn at Odra, Poland last year. Photo Getty Images

COMMENT:

How many times have we heard about empty crowds at an event that has come to town?

We're known, in many instances, to wait until the last minute to buy tickets to events. We make the decision on whether to go based on the weather, how we feel on the day or on the off-chance something pops up last minute that means we can't make it.

I've attended winter concerts featuring national artists in Tauranga where the audience barely fills half of the allocated space and I've attended televised sports games in Rotorua, featuring some of New Zealand's top athletes, that fail to attract full crowds.

It's not for every event - but there are times where only small crowds attend different events around the Bay of Plenty, especially in winter.

But after more than 10 weeks of living under Covid-19 restrictions, I'm hopeful we've been given a bit of a wake-up call to attend those gigs, shows, expos, speaker sessions, sports matches, seminars and festivals we say we don't want to miss and not let something insignificant to decide for us.

Many of us have spent more time than we would have liked to in our own homes and want to get out, some possibly even want to get away from those we've spent so much of the those Covid-19 alert levels with.

And so far, it's showing.

You only have to look at the number of ticket sales the first couple of days of this week to know people seem to be gagging for something to do.

Kiwis are snapping up tickets to see their favourite musicians live in concert.

One of our favourite Bay bands, L.A.B., looks set to sell out their biggest headline gigs to date, with a combined crowd of about 10,000 in Hamilton and Auckland. Good Vibes - a touring winter music festival that will visit Rotorua and Tauranga - also looks set to sell out their 3000-3500-capacity events in each centre.

Are we about to have our most social winter yet?

It's the few months of the year we traditionally prefer to stay home, warming up after we've had our weekend outing or playing or supporting our winter sports.

But after having valuable time stripped away from us, it's time to make the most of what we have - and support the events we get because those events are jobs for people, they're helping businesses and they're pumping money into the community.

Let's decide to allow excitement, fun and interest take priority over the desire to keep warm this winter, and choose to socialise over rugging up on the couch to get through those movies sitting in our Netflix watchlists.

Here's hoping the community has a new appreciation for what comes to their city so we can see packed crowds at shows, and sports matches filled with supporters. It's good for our own entertainment value, but it's also good for all the businesses involved.