putting a microphone at the end of a 747 jet". When the Beatles played in Chicago on 5 September, a local policeman described the adulation as "kind of like Sinatra multiplied by 50 or 100". Variety reported that 160 females were treated for injuries and distress in Vancouver, after thousands of fans charged at the security barriers in front of the stage. At Jacksonville on 11 September, 500 fans kept the Beatles trapped in the George Washington Hotel car park after the group had given a press conference at the hotel. With only a dozen police officers on hand, it took the band 15 minutes to move the 25 feet from the lift to their limousine. Harrison refused to take part in the scheduled ticker-tape parades, given Kennedy's assassination the previous year. He said that the constant demand on their time, from fans, city officials, hotel management and others, was such that the band often locked themselves in their hotel bathroom to gain some peace. The tour earned the group over a million dollars in ticket sales, and stimulated a further increase in record and Beatles-related merchandise sales. Robert Shelton of The New York Times criticised the Beatles for "creat[ing] a monster in their audience" and said that the band should try to subdue their fans "before this contrived hysteria reaches uncontrollable proportions". Reports at this time likened the intensity of the fans' adulation to a religious fervour. Derek Taylor, the band's press officer, was quoted in the New York Post as saying, "Cripples threw away their sticks [and] sick people rushed up to the car ... It was as if some savior had arrived and all these people were happy and relieved." In a report from London for the Partisan Review, Jonathan Miller wrote of the effects of the Beatles' extended absence overseas: "They have become a religion in fact ... All over the place though there are icons, devotional photos and illuminated messiahs which keep the tiny earthbound fans in touch with the provocatively absconded deities." American social commentators Grace and Fred Hechinger complained that adults had failed to provide youth with an adequate foundation for their creativity, and they especially deplored the tendency for "creeping adult adolescence", whereby parents sought to share their children's "banal pleasures". During the 1964 tour, the Beatles met Bob Dylan in their New York hotel. Lennon later enthused about the meeting; he