Find of the Month
Each month we highlight interesting, important, and odd items from our collection, along with the stories they tell.
Most recent Find of the Month
August 2025 - Rock music at Sick's Stadium
Rainier Valley citizens delivered petitions to City Council in the spring of 1970, protesting the use of Sick’s Stadium for rock concerts. The council denied the request to ban them altogether, but Councilmember Liem Tuai wrote sympathetically to the organizer:
We have placed many restrictions on a possible rock concert to a point where I would seriously doubt if a promoter would desire to use the stadium unless he had a national rock group as a drawing card… I believe the Council has made every effort to insure that the concert would not be one which would create any problems of embarrassment, or disturb the peace and tranquility of our citizens.
Janis Joplin, the Steve Miller Band, and others played an all-day festival at the stadium on July 5, which brought more letters of protest to the council. One neighbor wrote, “Please – why do we have to be run over by the hippies congregating in our neighborhood?” Another complained, “You hire people to study noise pollution and yet you authorize a rock festival in a residential area and subject all of us to this loud noise (not music). I tried phonning [sic] the police to have it subdued but there was nothing they could do because you and the Mayor authorized it.”
After another festival at the stadium on July 26 that featured Jimi Hendrix, a legislative assistant responded to the protesting neighbors:
It is recognized that rock festivals are a source of irritation to some citizens as well as posing other problems. For these and other reasons no future rock festivals are presently planned for Sicks’ Stadium. However, please recognize that a good number of people find this type of entertainment highly enjoyable as others do football games, Seafair parades and festivals, hydroplane races, Shriners’ conventions, and other similar activities which may interfere with individual citizens and community quiet. Hopefully, through noise pollution studies and other efforts of the City Council and City officials, we will find a way to meet all of the various entertainment needs of the citizenry while protecting the quiet and peace of the rest.
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