Tailgating and Olive COurt

Ozhawk

Well-Known Member
I know this is hot topic but I have a co-worker who is also a very good friend who bought a quaint little house on Olive court in 1974. Its a wonderfull neighborhood to live in and just an excellent location for him to walk to his job of 36 years at the UI hospitals. For the first 10 years of him living there he allowed people to park in his yard free of charge for Home football games. Then instead of charging he decided to quit the parking thin altogether. Things were fine on gameday all the way up in to around 1990. Then occaisionally he had a drunk stagger into his back yard and urinate but it didn't bother him. As time wore on things started getting more complicated and by the time the late 1990s rolled around he was having troubles with many people trampling on his flower beds throwing cans into his yard and almost always used his yard for a pee break. He still didn't mind that much but it did bother him a little. Around 2000 things cranked up even more and he started to battle with the occaisional drunk passed out in his front or back yard. Around 2005 things started getting worse. he was now finding people in his back yard and even 3 intruders into his house asking for a bathroom to pee in. THings started getting to the point that people were constantly trying to use is bathroom and constantly ******* in his yard. In the last 3 years he has had at least 1 forced entry attempt into his house on game day and has had to call the ambulance at least once per season for an unresponsive drunk in his yard. This past week the windows were broken out of his garage and he found a college kid passed out on his porch and one in his back yard. The one in his back yard was unresponsive.

I guess curtailing the drinking isn't such a bad thing. He is a football fan but game day is Hell for him and his neighbors.
 


Olive Court always seemed like a weird place to me. I LOVED tailgating there but I'm also 6'2" 225 lbs. If I was a 5'4" freshman girl that place would be terrifying. Basically you're in a secluded field with tons of people drinking to excess and no police in sight. But I never had a bad experience there, nor did any of my friends.

On a side note, it sounds like your friend needs to buy a fence. I mean, he's been there for 36 years and has been having trouble with his yard for a decade. If he invested in a decent 7 foot fence around his yard, he probably wouldn't have to worry about the back. The front yard is different, but it seems like most trouble at Olive Court is in the back anyway.
 


Olive Court always seemed like a weird place to me. I LOVED tailgating there but I'm also 6'2" 225 lbs. If I was a 5'4" freshman girl that place would be terrifying. Basically you're in a secluded field with tons of people drinking to excess and no police in sight. But I never had a bad experience there, nor did any of my friends.

On a side note, it sounds like your friend needs to buy a fence. I mean, he's been there for 36 years and has been having trouble with his yard for a decade. If he invested in a decent 7 foot fence around his yard, he probably wouldn't have to worry about the back. The front yard is different, but it seems like most trouble at Olive Court is in the back anyway.

His friend would then probably spend his sundays fixing his fence.
 


His friend would then probably spend his sundays fixing his fence.

Better to fix a fence than to have home invaders, broken windows, and unresponsive freshmen all over the place. But in my experience, Hawkeye fans aren't the destructive type generally. I mean, we don't have an annual riot called VEISHA...Unless they literally broke through the fence he wouldn't have much to repair. Some scraped up planks and stuff wouldn't require repair.
 


Ozhawk,

That is some food for thought. In retrospect it really does seem that things have ramped up in the past 10 years. I remember tailgating in the fieldhouse lot in '03 or '04 and that was seriously out of hand, they probably saved someones life by making that a dry lot.
 




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