a few reasons I suppose, from the trivial like parking is almost always a hassle to basically... the smoke, the weed, drunk asshole spilling their beers on me and not respecting personal space or seat numbers... but I think my biggest concern is I drop the money to listen to Artist X... but I end up getting to listen to drunk asshole next to me howl along with every song - and I'm not talking about when there's an appropriate "sing-a-long" moment with the crowd - I'm talking about just terrible drunk singing/shouting. It irks me to pay that much money to have to sit or stand next to drunk assholes. I'd most often rather listen to a nice live recording on my hi-fi. maybe I'm just a grumpy old man.
Security is pretty strict about smoking in Portland. I haven't seen anyone get away with smoking anything for more than a minute in years. I'll mostly only see shows at venues that have excellent sound. I hate shows downtown. Most the venues have shitty sound and finding parking is a drag. When I see a quiet show and some girl is talking over the whole thing about what she's going to do this weekend I lose my shit. I only see one or two shows a year now a days, getting up at 5 am makes late nights a drag. One nice thing about Portland is that most shows end before 11 pm. I saw Billy Bragg when I was offered a free ticket, it was a good show by a guy I wasn't very familiar with and I saw John Maus twice because he's great and is also my wife's favorite artist.