Concert-Goers Make Room for Daddy (and Mom Too)

Decibel-dodging parents once banished to long parking lot vigils at rock concerts can now nibble and mingle in the club-like atmosphere of a “quiet room” set up by several sympathetic concert halls. At Nassau Coliseum in Uniondale, N.Y., recently, dozens of adults gathered in a room below the stands while inside 18,000 youngsters jumped to the music of Bon Jovi. “You used to see parents hanging around outside, sitting in the cars, going to movies and just hanging around until the kids are done,” said Bruce Lahti, a vice president of Facility Management, which has implemented the rooms here, in New Orleans and Long Beach, and will also add them to its halls in Los Angeles, St. Louis and Miami. At the Bon Jovi concert, parents snacked on potato chips and soft drinks and coffee to the muffled strains of the guitars and singers. Some were sad they couldn’t hear more. “We couldn’t get tickets,” explained Joanne Mauro, 40, of Farmingdale. “We like Bon Jovi. We went into the ladies room to hear a little better.”

--Eleven Amtrak passengers waiting to get off at Baltimore’s train station were stunned when the train pulled away with them still on it. The passengers, all in the last four cars, had been told not to disembark as the train station platform was too short to reach them and the train would have to pull forward, which it did, all the way to Wilmington, Del. There the protesting passengers on the train, which was bound for New York from Savannah, Ga., waited three hours for transportation back to Baltimore. “It was determined there was a misunderstanding of communications between the train’s four conductors regarding the need for a second stop in Baltimore,” said Cliff Black, a spokesman for the railroad.

--Britain’s Princess Diana shook hands, discussed opera and posed for photographs with patients at the opening of Britain’s first AIDS hospital ward. The hand-shaking attracted the most attention in the 40-minute royal visit to the London ward: “She did this to explode the myth” that AIDS can be caught from activities like shaking hands, a spokesman at Buckingham Palace said. “The princess shook my hand without wearing gloves and that meant more to me than anything,” said Shane Snape, who works on the ward in Middlesex Hospital and is infected with the AIDS virus, although he has not developed the disease. “For want of better words, it gives AIDS a royal approval and helps to break down this stigma to what’s attached to it.”