Sure, you had people outfitted in crazy “Parrothead” costumes–guys in pirate suits or grass skirts
and coconut bras, gals in super-short shorts and cowboy boots and “Fin-Land” hats. And of course there was beer and liquor galore plus long cigars (and other stuff) being smoked, dancing in the parking lot to “Sweet Home Alabama” and skull-and-crossbones flags and Texas flags and American flags, and throngs marching along chanting, “USA! USA! USA!”
But the jam-packed scene at Frisco’s Pizza Hut Park this weekend–where at least 30,000 people gathered in the acres of surrounding parking lot to “tailgate” before Saturday night’s Jimmy Buffett show–was also about the spending of major bucks. Bucks that went way beyond the cost of the concert tickets.
The Parrotheads are mainly professional people out for a weekend lark, so it wasn’t uncommon for them to drop hundreds of dollars renting spaces outside the park for their tricked-out campers and pickup trucks and RVs. The group pictured (photo by Jeanne Prejean) said they coughed up $11,500 for this glorified golf cart, specifically for the weekend. Buffet himself has a lucrative deal pushing products under the Margaritaville brand with the Plano-based Dr Pepper Snapple Group, so corporate types on “official business” were well-represented this weekend as well. It’s booze and wads of cash that lubricate the Parrothead Nation, no doubt.
