BUYING CONCERT TICKETS: THEN VS NOW

  Buying concert tickets now is a pretty easy and uneventful affair. You are already sitting in front of your computer screen all day. You just open a new tab, go to the site, click on the ticket, amd within seconds PayPal has processed your payment, the ticket is in your inbox, and your phone receives a QR code to use when entering the venue. Hoofyckingray. There's hardly any anticipation left anymore, the glitter is gone, and the thrill is dead. 

   Growing up in a time when the internet was not a priority however, and internet ticket sales either scarce or all together nonexistent, meant that to see your favourite artist perform live you had to go through a rite of passage, if you will. The entire process of getting your teenage arse down to the designated ticket seller and hope they won't deny sale because you are underaged...put a pin on the underaged part, we will come back to that later.

   It was very possible you were growing up in a country/at a time when market hours were anything but convenient. If you were as unpriviledged as I, that meant that the only actual free time you had during the day was when the stores were closed. Which, in turn, meant that if you wanted to make your way downtown to go that record store you most likely didn't even know where was located to buy the effin ticket, you had to skip school. Or english school. Or what other unholy extracurricular activities your parents had bestowed upon you hoping that a nation-wide sporting event would contribute enough to your grades to get you through to next grade. Let me paint the picture a little more vividly for you. You are a 12 year old with badly applied eyeliner and maybe, god forbid, red dreadlocks. You loiter after the bell rings at the very back of the yard, slowly sneaking further and further away from the rest of the cattle-ahem, students- making their way indoors. After everyone is gone and no teacher is in sight, you scale the barricades (oh to be young and flexible again. How did I bring my leg over my shoulder like this?) and jump down on the street outside. Sweet freedom! Now run, run my child, as fast as the wind, across the street, away from the windows, and make a very long detour to ensure that no snitch is going to see you from the class window as you are making your way to the bus stop.

   Once you were in the bus stop, you had to play it cool. Don't act like this is the first time you ride the bus all by yourself. You know which bus you are going to get on. You have your lunch money for the ticket. And your hair is a warning that you are dangerous so don't fucking come near me. You are so ready for that gig.

   Or perhaps you had just turned 14, and your eyeliner game was flawless, and you were skipping english school for the gazillionth time in a row. Let's face it, you hadn't set foot in there for two weeks already. And you had classes 5 times a week. Oopsie. Well acquainted with bus routes, the store clerks, even the venue location, you confidently made your way there at 6pm feeling like a thug because it's winter and dark outside already, to deposit your life savings on the counter, chipped black nail polish and all, and tell them straight what you wanted. Yes, you were indeed over 16 and thus could buy the ticket.

   Frankly I have no idea how that even worked. Since that very first gig. Maybe I did indeed look older as I was told. Maybe being overly developed for my age (at 12) helped. Maybe the venue staff just didn't give a damn. I was one of the few lucky ones to make it to the gig. Makeup, stomper boots, a poorly constructed alibi, rocking out to your heart's content surrounded by older, taller people you are secretly terrified of. Days of glory long past!

   Whereas now? You are sitting cross legged on your sofa, killing braincells keeping track of people you really don't like on social media when a notification informs you that the fourtieth even of the year is coming up in your city. Click the link to the sale pag, click the button , and you are now the proud underaged owner of a ticket to a cool Instagram story paid for with your parents credit card. Oh yes. Really builds up the excitement for the impending rocking out!

   Okay okay I am being bitter again I know. There's still those of us who stand in line at a local multimedia store not to pay our internet bill but to buy a physical ticket to a gif. Those of us who fight over who gets the first ticket stub available at the local rock bar. Those of us who still bribe our way past security to a sold out festival, fist-bump the bouncer at the local club because we know someone on the inside or sneak through the back door with another dozen people because someone in that group used to work there once upon a time and knows the free way in. Some things never change! Our knees may be getting older, but our spirits are just as crazy as the first time we got the shit beaten out of us by our parents for teenage delinquency!

   Of course there are other things that never change just migrate mediums: for example we may no longer need to camp outside the selling venue 36 hours in advance for a highly sought after ticket, but we do need to keep our laptops plugged in the power outlet, with multiple browsers open and in constant communication with our friends to make sure one of us will make it through the e-queueing and get the tickets before they sell out! Although in the latter case, bathrooms breaks are slightly easier minus the hot dog run fun and excitement.

   And of course, who can forget the frantic panic when it was time to find a hiding place for it in your teenage room that your parents wouldn't find when they performed their regular drugs-satanic-and-general-shenanigans raids in your room? The endless search of a perfect hiding place, the nagging worry in your stomach when you were at school that maybe it had been discovered, the careful, stealthy unearthing and sigh of relief when you foind it intact, or the horror when it was not there anymore and you couldn't decide whether you should go nuclear or play it casual and not let your parents know that you know! And of course, the horror and despair when the ticket was gone, destroyed...frantically trying to calculate your remaining budget-if it had not been confiscated, making plans, swearing revenge, lamenting, wishing it is not sold out despite it being mere days away, resolving to get in no matter the cost...and to find a better hiding place next time. 

   Or, simply, lying awake at night, waiting for everyone to fall asleep, so you can tiptoe to your hidden treasure just to look at it and touch it carefully. To feel the butterflies in your belly: the dream is real.

   Granted, technology makes things a lot easier! Especially when it comes to buying tickets for a gig or festival abroad! Those dreadful, pre-internet attempts at telephone communication when neither party spoke the others language and both parties' English were basic at first....with landlines or payphones...and then the bank transfer....oh dear Anubis. You do NOT want to know. But as easy as it is now, it lacks the excitement, the cards fun, and the excitement of going on an adventure! Getting the ticket was merely the first step in an epic adventure that awaited you, the exhilaration building up to burst out of you in a fountain of ecstatic energy when you were surrounded by your kindred spirits as your favourite song's baseline made every organisation inside your body pulse and throb! The days when everyone arrived at the venue pumped up. With lighters held up during that one song, chanting along. When the most important thing wasn't to show off how much we were having to people we never met, but to ACTUALLY have fun, to walk out the venue with shaky knees, disoriented, stumbling in circles with your friends not knowing whether you should get to water first or find a way across the city to your houses! 

   Buying concert tickets used to be a rite of passage for any rock fan and unfortunately it has gone and taken with it a sizeable bit of excitement in anticipation of impending awesomeness. Personally, I am not sure if I like it now. I have all this convenience at my disposal, but I find it to be blunt and unexciting. As with many other things that I grew up dreaming of, like spy-like wristwatches you can talk into, touchscreens, and voice commands, I find that now they are here the thrill is gone and don't quite live up to what we dreamt of long ago despite being everything we ever wanted. Perhaps because we take them for granted so much that there is no excitement or appreciation. I find myself thinking back to the dreadfully inconvenient days with nostalgia, eager to feel the knot in my stomach when I haven't gotten the ticket yet and the bats dancing in my belly when I am finally holding it in my hands. Disgruntled old fuck? Maybe. But once there was no more reason to brag about the futuristic hi-tech way you got your ticket, there was not much left to give you the thrills. 

   Ticket buying went from an adventure to a mundane activity too fast. Is the convenience worth the boredom? You tell me.