A young and naïve Adina Erwin was in search of a career in 1994. She had stumbled onto the live entertainment industry as a nighttime event receptionist at the Charlotte (N.C.) Coliseum. That’s when she started to see “this is a thing, you can do this.”
“I didn’t know this industry existed. I didn’t know this was a thing. I thought people who worked in this business basically came to the building when there was an event and they worked the event and went home,” recalls the new GM of Barclays Center, Brooklyn, for ASM Global.
Two experiences early on made her say “you know what, I’m doing this. This is what I’m going to do.”
One was the circus. Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey came to Charlotte, setting up their animal compound in the parking lot. In addition to tents for the elephants and other animals, the compound included trailers for the animal handlers and circus workers.
Adina did not know how any of this worked when she went on a tour of the compound with some of her coworkers. “I was walking around the animal compound basically like a spectator,” she said. And she got an eyeful.
Walking past one trailer, she beheld an unusual sight – a lineup of chimpanzees and their handlers. There was a chimp, behind which was a handler grooming the chimp. Behind the handler was another chimp, grooming the handler, then a chimp, then a handler. The people were grooming the chimps and the chimps were grooming the people. “It was interesting. It was like they were trying to keep that social order intact. I thought, oh my God, this is crazy.”
Then she turned around. This was a year when Gunther Gebel-Williams, with his platinum blond hair, was the star of the circus, and there he was, out there with the elephants.
“And Linda, he had his arm up the elephant’s butt with a water hose. He was giving the elephant an enema, or something. I’m thinking, what is going on? First of all, to see someone do that in general, but it was Gunther Gebel-Williams. He was showing us he was taking care of the elephants himself. He wasn’t just a showman.”
Adina walked away from that experience thinking “I’ve got to do this. I’ve got to be in this ever-changing, different day, different event, different set up, different type of clientele environment.”
She fell in love with the circus, right down to the special relationship venues have with that entertainment group. Charlotte Coliseum had adopted a beagle and he got his annual checkup from the circus veterinarian. They all knew him.
“I thought this is awesome.”
Then the Grateful Dead came to Charlotte. Adina was not a fan and knew nothing about the band and definitely nothing about the Deadheads, the fans that travel from show to show, descending on the venue up to a week in advance of the band and setting up housekeeping in the parking lot.
Once again, she toured the parking lot, looking at all the Deadheads and how they lived and what they were doing and what they were smoking. And she saw a strange sight, this object that sort of looked like a big mat in the backseat of a Deadhead’s Pinto. She walked up and asked him, “What is that?”
“I’m growing yeast. I use it to make bread for the people.”
It was a gigantic yeast ball. “I didn’t quite understand. I was like, this is crazy. This whole situation is crazy. There were people who were licking frogs. It was the most amazing thing ever — aphrodisiac frogs.
“That was my introduction to this business,” Erwin says. “From that point forward, I was trying to work in that building anywhere anyone would let me work – box office, group sales, conversion crew. I was there. I wanted to be in that building and learn whatever I could where ever they’d give me access.”
Her bosses at the time were Sporty Jeralds and Steve Camp. Observing her enthusiasm and work ethic, they finally said:
“You can’t keep coming down here and not getting paid. You have to stop doing that and go back to school and get an advanced degree and then get in the business.”
LESSONS LEARNED: Erwin went to UMass Amherst’s graduate program in sports management and learned the business the more formal way. But forever more, the opening act of her stellar career in venue management is Gunther Gebel-Williams with his arm up an elephant’s butt and a yeast ball in the back of a Pinto. — Based on a true story as told to Linda Deckard
Photo: A young Adina Erwin at the old Reunion Arena, Dallas, one of her early fulltime positions in the biz.