It may have been nearly 28 years ago, but Phil Mickelson still remembers the traffic jam from hell.
Let’s go back to 1992.
The City of Tempe, Arizona, had an 11 p.m. curfew at the time for its downtown and nearby areas, which meant concert promoters for a Guns N’ Roses and Metallica show couldn’t secure Arizona State University’s Sun Devil Stadium for a late August concert.
Among other considerations, officials at ASU were certainly aware of Guns N’ Roses’ penchant for taking the stage well beyond the start time printed on everyone’s concert ticket and so the decision was made to take a pass.
The concert, set for the second day of fall classes on Aug. 25, was moved to a venue 30 miles to the southwest of campus to Phoenix International Raceway. No concerts had ever before been held at the venue, which at the time had just four roads in and out.
On the day of the concert, Tropical Storm Lester made things worse, as it brought lots of rain to the Phoenix area. Water had to be released from dams upstream at five times the normal rate. That water came rushing down the normally dry Gila River riverbed near the track and then flooded out two of those four roads.
As for Guns N’ Roses, they started right on schedule – their own – at 11:35 p.m. on that Tuesday night. At midnight, there will still thousands of fans trying to make their way into the race track because of a four-hour traffic jam. The concert ran till about 1:45 a.m.
Phil Mickelson, who had graduated from ASU and turned pro about three months prior, found himself among the 30,000 or so fans trying to leave the race track, stuck in a traffic jam worse the one coming in to the concert a few hours before.
We learn of Mickelson’s side of this concert debacle story more than 27 years later, thanks to the thread by Aidan Moher, who started a viral Twitter sensation on Jan. 3 by asking a great question:
“Tell me a story about yourself (that) sounds like a lie but is absolutely true.”
Countless people have chimed in over the last few days, telling some amazing (and hopefully all true) stories.
Among them is Rick Fil-A, @rickspeterson on Twitter, whose contribution was that he was stuck in a limo with Mickelson on that night.
Mickelson, according to the tweet, called his agent about getting a helicopter to fly them all out of the area.
I was in a limo that was stuck in traffic with @PhilMickelson , who called his agent to see if he could get a helicopter to evacuate us.
— Rick Fil-A (@rickspeterson) January 8, 2020
Mickelson confirmed he was there with a reply to Rick Fil-A’s tweet: “Guns n roses concert 1992. True story.”
Lefty was among the thousands of people who literally didn’t get home till after the sun was up the next day, tweeting: “I met my wife Amy that morning. She was going to her 7:40 class as I pulled in. I’ll never forget it.”