When you think of car crime, your mind might meander along boulevards of car theft, intoxicated driving, and vehicular manslaughter. While this story is less direct than a simple hit-and-run, it’s certainly no less heinous. Today marks the 18th anniversary of a Dave Matthews Band tour bus literally shitting on Chicago tourists. Pack a barf bag, this story’s about to get disgusting.
I don’t think I’ve ever heard a Dave Matthews Band song. Call it a generational gap or Canadian radio stations’ strict adherence to CanCon rules, but I must’ve missed this band in its entirety. Nevertheless, we’re talking about a very successful Grammy-winning musical act here. All but two Dave Matthews Band albums have gone platinum, which explains why the band had full-fledged tour buses, cars you can poop in, for its 2004 touring season.
The tour bus assigned to violinist Boyd Tinsley was driven by Stefan Wohl of Selma, Texas. According to the Associated Press via CBS News, Wohl was alone in the bus and needed to empty his waste tank. With a hectic touring schedule of back-to-back dates, how would Wohl find time to dump the load? Well, an answer came in the form of Chicago’s Kinzie Street Bridge.
See, the Kinzie Street Bridge crosses the Chicago River and doesn’t feature a traditional deck. Instead of concrete or asphalt, the bridge has more than 150 feet of riveted metal grating, a relatively cheap solution that offers decent grip and lets rainfall pass straight through the deck of the bridge. Hey, if rain can pass through then why not human waste? This is a city that dyes the river green for St. Patrick’s Day; there’s a good chance they’ll never notice if things get a bit crappy.
Unfortunately, the waste dump didn’t go as planned because right as Wohl drained the tank, a sightseeing boat passed underneath the Kinzie Street Bridge. How does a tourism boat operate profitably while giving passengers the best view of the city? By stuffing more than 100 people onto an open deck, of course. Suddenly, everyone on that boat had an emergency defecation situation on their hands. And faces. And chests.
A coach bus can have a black tank with a capacity of 100 gallons or more. Let’s say that each gallon weighed the same eight pounds that a gallon of water does, which seems like a fairly reasonable assumption. That’s a ballpark 800 pounds of human waste that came raining down on tourists. That’s only slightly less than the weight of a 2021 Honda Gold Wing. According to the Chicago Tribune, passengers reacted exactly how you’d expect them to react.
There was this “stunned silence initially. Then sort of this horrible realization as they began to smell themselves as to what happened,” said Steedman Bass, 35, of Boston, who was a passenger on the boat but not sprayed. “It was horrific.”
According to a filing with the Illinois Attorney General, “Dozens of passengers on the sightseeing boat tour were doused with the liquid human waste.” Five people went to hospital for testing, which presumably means that dozens of people were okay to just go home and wash off the human filth.
To make matters worse, boat passengers weren’t the only people in the splash zone. Lynn LaPlante Allaway was driving behind the tour bus when she realized that while the bridge’s grated deck allows for excellent drainage, some shit just ended up sticking around. In an addition to an interview with the Chicago Tribune, Allaway detailed the experience on her blog.
The horrifying smell hit us like a tsunami and I barfed, leaning my head out of the window while I drove, my husband now screaming from the passenger seat. My son was quietly oblivious in the backseat.
And the full-on smiting began: my outgoing barf got blown back by the wind and right into my hair. My beautiful, clean, fresh, prenatal vitamin hair! This new, combined smell of barf plus poop made me throw up again. And again. By this point, I was also crying, with my husband screaming at me to “pull over, for God’s sake, pull over!”
After the dirty deed was done, investigators were fairly quick to find the perpetrator. The Chicago Tribune reports that a combination of security footage and running plates was good enough to pin down the offending bus.
Videotape evidence from the nearby East Bank Club, a swanky gym, showed only one big bus crossing the Kinzie Street Bridge during the time when the dumping happened. And that fact and a license-plate check were enough for investigators to pin the crime on the Tinsley bus.
The Associated Press reports that Wohl, the bus driver, ended up getting 18 months probation, 150 hours of community service, and a $10,000 fine. Needless to say, his days of driving the Dave Matthews Band around were over. In addition, the Dave Matthews Band had to settle a civil suit with the State of Illinois for $200,000. Still, the band found supporters in high places throughout the shitshow. According to the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Mayor Richard Daley said that the dumping was “absolutely unacceptable,” but believed that the Dave Matthews Band was “a very good band.”
That should be the end of the story, right? Well, not quite. Right as the Dave Matthews Band reached a settlement with the State of Illinois, it dropped a new Ben & Jerry’s collaboration flavor called – and I’m not making this up – Magic Brownies.
So what have we learned here? Well, don’t dump your waste tank in the Chicago River is a start, but I feel like the real message is that one really shitty decision can dramatically affect a band’s image. The stench of this incident really hung in the air around the Dave Matthews Band, and I’m sure that Chicagoans will never forget about the day DMB dropped a deuce in the river.
Lead photo credit: Prevost, thms.nl, diliff, Twemoji
from another Torontonian … it wasn’t just CanCon … it was “rock” stations that pounded out noise for persons with musical IQ of 37.5 … although, to their credit, it did save us Dave Matthews Band … best known for having a fan killed by a thrown chair at a concert …
I had never heard this story before and Id just like to say that you wrote it wonderfully. I had an audible gasp when you mentioned the bridge. Then the note about packing people into the boat for profit elicited more laughter.
Great writing.
Anyone covered in mierde could’ve easily, after disembarking, walked down the street to Water Tower Place to clean off.
the real crime was when the people had to actually listen tot he band, we already knew they were crappy, this just kind of sealed the deal.
This article made my day.
First the bands manager hired a busing company to provide the bus transportation. The band was not involved in any way except to provide organic matter to the tank. The bus driver took it upon himself to drop the excrement similar to what airlines do all the time. The band was caught in the cross hairs not responsible but no way the media wasn’t going to crucify them. Spent money and still crucified. I was hoping autopian would be doing better than gotcha journalism but I guess the kinja is strong in this jedi?
This is practically a city holiday. This event gets a mention every year along with the:
-1995 heat wave (It’s hot out dere! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=luPdoj89T_U)
-1967 blizzard
-1999 blizzard
-2011 blizzard
-1979 blizzard
-Disco Demolition
-Max Headroom signal hijacking
-1968 riots
-Original McCormick Place fire
-Great Chicago fire
I’m sure I’m missing several more.
Oh man, that 2011 blizzard was an *event*. I bought my first car the day after the blizzard!
But my favorite memory is this: Jim Cantore going nuts over thundersnow (with a Smart in the background!):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJt4nV6hM1Y
Oh, and a joke headline along the lines of “Thousands Of Drivers Trapped On LSD.”
It sure was. I was briefly living in the suburbs at the time. The starter cord on my snowblower snapped half-way through the first pull and then I almost got smoked my a plow truck while clearing the driveway apron because I couldn’t hear him over the snowblower.
I like to shrug it off but I was also in my late twenties at the time. Pretty sure the next time it happens I’ll just put a sign in front of my house that says “Abandoned” and just leave.
I delivered pizza during the 1999 blizzard. I had a ball blasting around the unplowed roads in my dad’s truck. Made big bucks in tips too.
“Welcome to the Shitty of Chicago”
damn autocorrect.. should have read CITY
If that happened these days there would be a few more zeros behind that payout.
“The morning dump” prototype edition.
that’ll teach them to hang out on the poop deck.
I assumed the worst thing Dave Matthews Band could do was assault your ears with their shitty music. Now I find out they literally dumped excrement on people. Huh. They really are awful.
Coincidentally that’s the same bridge where an errant piling pierced an old utility tunnel under the river and flooded a good chunk of the basements of the buildings downtown. Little trains used to run in the tunnels way back in the day delivering coal, so sort of transportation related?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_flood
Those bridges with gratings for decks really suck when riding bikes or scooters in the rain.
I just, I mean, what do you even do in this situation? Can’t go into Marshall Fields like that, can’t go to a nearby hotel, getting straight into your car to drive home just gets doo-doo feces all over the inside of your car, just turns one problem into two
All I can think of is take a dive into the river, unless that river is somehow worse??
Well they were trying to dump the waste into the river…..
While I enjoyed your comment in general, what made me give it the ol’ thumbs-up was the Marshall Fields reference.
Where else would you go to replace all your stuff? Carson’s? Please
Nah, Chas A Stevens.
In all honesty you strip naked in the street wiping off whatever you can with clean areas of your clothes and then drive home.
So the woman who threw up twice and was crying was driving at the time? Holy crap.
Admittedly I once worked with a woman who was so hungover on the way to work that she threw up in the car – but forgot to open the window first. Twice.
It does get remembered. I worked with a woman who disliked Bob Dylan, because in her (and his) younger days before he got famous, he puked in the back seat of her VW.
Shit on Dave Mathew’s Band all you want but Carter Beauford is one hell of a drummer. I don’t like their music but if I focus in on the drumming alone it makes it tolerable.
Who are you and why do you have correct opinions similar to mine?
Turn off the vocals and suddenly I can be mildly jealous of Beaufords four way coordination.
Yup, the only thing wrong with Dave Matthews Band is Dave Matthews.
For real. I accidentally saw them live and I got the feeling each member was playing a different song. The show was fucking awful. But the drummer had chops.
So the band settled with the city, but what about the people they shat upon? Surely DMB did something to compensate the innocent victims?!? Somebody dig up Paul Harvey! I want the rest of the story!!!
The only thing the bad did wrong was hiring a manager who hired a busing company who hired a driver who illegally dumped the waste. As one who was alive and a teenager at the time the band wasn’t considered complicit in the crime at all. They agreed to pay compensation that no court would have ever required. Thomas is pulling a Jalopnik. Accuse a famous person who had nothing to do with the situation to get clicks. I thought autopian was supposed to be better than this. I am disappointed it is becoming Jalopnik at a time Jalopnik is trying to separate themselves from this kind of crap.
What a shitty day should be a Monday feature. Tell us about somebody’s bad day whether it be poo related or not.
Well, DMB isn’t exactly New Wave. Each to their own. It’s won’t argue about whether it’s *good* or not, but it was pretty popular in the ‘90s & into this century. We used to drive 2&1/2 hours up to Charlottesville for them occasionally: they put on a fun show imo.
Last time I saw them was the show they did after the Virginia Tech shootings. You can hate all you want on them, but they enabled some good catharsis that night.
I should also say that they were genuinely upset about this: these guy’s ethos was NOT about shitting on people. That’s not a pun: they were about inclusion & acceptance and helping people have a good time
Oops: didn’t mean to imply you were hating on them. Little defensiveness left over, I guess. I think a wide variety of taste makes the world a more interesting place.
Mind you, when I’m subjected to too much Death Metal, I kinda want to go stomp on puppies: not my thing. That’s taste.
I think I realized my problem wasn’t with the actual band, but their fans.
Insert Primus/Dead/Phish
The Autopian SURE has a niche.
Next on Autopian Reviews: the M35A2 Deuce and a Half!
What happens when stuff drops on someone’s head? Most people look up, mouths gaping open. I can hear Linda Belcher gagging now.
As a Chicagoland resident, I remember this story very well. But learning that it happened 18 years ago … Damn does that make me feel old!