Without a doubt, the Westminster Kennel Club dog show is a premier event. From the purple floor covering throughout the two buildings, a.k.a the piers, where all of the breed judging occurs to the instant pop-up cafés with high top tables and scattered lounging chairs in Pier 92 --let us not forget to mention the complementary shuttles from the gold star hotels -- it is a big event.
But, my goodness, it is unbearably crowded. It comes as a big disappointment when the crowds surrounding several of the breed judging rings are at least 20 people deep in front of you and you cannot see anything, whatsoever. To aid spectating, thankfully they did have a few bleachers in scattered areas of Pier 92, not in Pier 94 as there was no available room to install such. In front of these bleachers they had set up complementary TV monitors to watch the live action, the downside was that they did not cordon off the area in front of the monitors so that a heavy stream of traffic walked in between the bleachers and the TV monitor, effectively blocking your vision.
In many areas, as I described to several friends via telephone, you had to wait on line to be able to walk through to get to the other side. I am not exaggerating, you had to wait online to be able to walk through funneled areas because one side of the ring is blocked off, and reasonably so because the breed ring entrances need to be kept open for the exhibitors and their dogs. However, one exhibitor commented, or rather complained last evening at group judging that they saw countless people in these restricted areas who certainly did not have the appropriate wristband on standing there observing the judging. Indeed, there were sentries positioned at the entrances to prevent people from entering these restricted areas as I myself saw many people turned away, but unfortunately in some areas I assume the security was more lax.
Should I even discuss the infuriating lines for the women's restrooms? Yes, I need to because it is exasperating not only for me that still to this day, even with the female gender dominating the percentage of exhibitors at AKC dog sporting events that there is no attention being paid to this major issue. In Pier 94, on two different locations throughout the day I had waited online with approximately 22 women in front of me. Only to discover when we finally entered the bathroom that there was an additional line feeding into the same women's bathroom stalls from the opposite side! To make matters worse, adjacent to ring three there were two restrooms that were out of order and obviously could not be used. I have to wonder if these bathrooms were closed purposefully due to their proximity to ring three as they were just steps away from the seating area. Or, maybe I am wrong and they were both unluckily indisposed for use, however that would lead me to a very reasonable question. Was there every effort made to get these bathrooms back into working condition, especially in light of the fact that a major event was going to be held there in this pier? Have they ever been in working order, and if not, then why haven't they? Again I return to the gender issue pointing out, again, that the majority of exhibitors are female. I firmly believe that we are consistently disregarded and it simply is unacceptable.
Do I sound like I am getting worked up about this? Well, yes, especially when you have to go to the ladies room and you will have to wait approximately 20 minutes online. Why are we forced to have to plan our bathroom forays throughout the day? Why are we forced to have to strategically plan our fluid intake? It doesn't make sense and it is just wrong.
