The primary time I can bear in mind ready out for tickets was in all probability early 1987 for the Genesis “Invisible Contact” tour that got here by Maryland in Could 1987. I used to be jammed in my buddy Matt’s VW bus with a handful of Pi Kappa Alpha brothers. Matt and I had been nonetheless in highschool.
It was freezing outdoors as we waited to purchase the Genesis tickets on the Hecht’s division retailer in Laurel, MD. We obtained paid one thing like $50 or $60 for the evening to purchase tickets, and that was big to me, since I used to be making round minimal wage as a film theatre usher.
After that evening, it grew to become an everyday factor. We’d sleep out on the streets of Richmond, VA, Washington, DC, and numerous locations round Maryland. My brother, Mike, labored with a ticket dealer, Ricky (Ticket Rick) Rae, and he would arrange the ticket waitouts.
After I obtained to varsity, the prospect to sleep out for tickets and become profitable was a extremely sought-after gig. Mike would put up a sign-up checklist on the PiKA home, and guys would race to get on it. Along with the nightly pay, we’d additionally get pizza and beer to gas us for the nights and days.
This was the period of the massive stadium concert events from the likes of Bruce Springsteen, Grateful Lifeless, Rolling Stones, U2, and The Who. Plenty of these ticket waitouts had been a number of days, and we’d keep in sketchy areas, the place nobody else wished to attend, so we’d get the entrance spots.
Typically, I’d additionally promote tickets within the parking plenty of concert events in Maryland and Washington, DC. That was an entire lot extra profitable, apart from the time that I made a decision to purchase a bunch of tickets for the Remedy and couldn’t promote any. These prices damage after I couldn’t repay my high-interest bank card.
Anyhow, these occasions sleeping out with a bunch of men from the frat had been a great time. There was this one time, there have been in all probability a dozen of us sleeping at RFK Stadium in Washington for the Who.
In the course of the lengthy nights of beers and hanging out, somebody got here up with a ingesting sport known as Whoville. I don’t bear in mind the right way to play, nevertheless it concerned cube and plenty of ingesting.
When tickets went on sale for U2’s Zoo TV tour, a big group of us once more waited at RFK in late April 1992. Along with the PiKA crowd ready out, a man named Redskins Rob introduced out ten or so homeless guys to attend in line, as nicely. Our crew of middle-class frat boys and Rob’s homeless guys grew to become quick pals and partied and laughed for days.
The Washington Post covered the U2 waitout and heralded how College of Maryland college students had been beating the scalpers.
After an 80-hour ordeal — 4 nights stuffed in a automotive, three days respiration bus exhaust, scarfing Cokes and franks, operating blocks for pit stops — the three College of Maryland seniors who camped out at RFK Stadium prevailed. They beat the scalpers to U2 live performance tickets.
At 8 a.m. right this moment they’d be, if all went as deliberate, first on line on the RFK field workplace. By 9 a.m. the 52,000-seat stadium will promote out, predicted a Ticketmaster official.
“It’s what you bought to do to get good seats,” stated Crawford Conniff, 22, stretched out close to the stadium amongst site visitors island dandelions.
“We’ve limitless time,” stated Mike Collins, 22. “If we had a job making 50 grand, we may pay $150 to scalpers.”
Really, $150 sounds low-cost for the $28.50 face-value tickets. Right this moment’s ticket sale for the Aug. 15 live performance, one of many summer time’s hottest, is prone to ignite an orgy of profiteering.
When the band performed Los Angeles, scalpers scored as much as $1,200 a ticket for prime seats. In Washington, as early as Tuesday, ticket brokers had stationed college students, unemployed and even homeless individuals at ticket shops to snap up a whole bunch of alternative seats.
These scalping days weren’t all glory, although. Typically I bumped into bother whereas promoting tickets. I obtained robbed at each the 1994 Sugar Bowl in New Orleans and a Grateful Lifeless present in Washington across the identical time.
After school, I used to be underemployed for some time and saved slinging tickets at any time when I may. I used to be additionally making an attempt to make it as a author, and I wrote up a contract article about scalping (Diary of a Ticket Scalper) experiences that was largely a troll. I obtained paid $100 by the New York Press (an alternative choice to the Village Voice on the time), and it elicited some indignant letters to the editor.
That article caught the eye of worldwide performing artist Citizen Cope years later, and he despatched me a DM on Instagram about it. It wasn’t random, although. I usually bumped into Cope within the 90s, when he additionally bought tickets on the streets of Baltimore and DC. I nonetheless have his first CD, which he bought to me out of his trunk whereas we had been scalping Pearl Jam at Structure Corridor in January 1995.
It’s been years since I bought tickets, nevertheless it all got here full circle in 2018 after I met actor Robert Romanus, who performed ticket scalper Mike Damone in Quick Occasions at Ridgemont Excessive.
“Scalper? Did you name me a scalper? Pay attention, gents, I carry out a service right here, and the service prices cash.”
– Mike Damone, Quick Occasions at Ridgemont Excessive
I miss these days of sleeping and promoting tickets on the streets. So many enjoyable, lengthy nights with fraternity brothers and strangers. These sizzling showers once we obtained dwelling had been so wonderful. And so many people managed to chip away at our school payments due to it.
Ticket Rick handed away twenty years in the past. RIP Ricky.
Initially revealed at https://shawncollins512.substack.com.
