Utter, fucking bedlam.
I've been doing this thing for awhile and I am not easily impressed, but the amount of drunken debauchery, thievery, physical and verbal abuse, and all-around general fuckery that occurred at the Comcast Theater the other night was nothing short of epic.
To put the events of that night in context, a brief history lesson is required...
Back in the day, this place was called, "The Meadows". People partied in the parking lot before a concert. Security and local police were mostly hands-off, unless there was a fight or some "extremely outrageous behavior" (which we now just call "behavior").
Then came Pearl Jam. In October of 1996, midway through the bands set, fans on the lawn rushed the reserved seats. A police officer was knocked down. Out came the pepper-spray and the riot gear. After the show, things intensified even more. A full-blown riot ensued in the parking lots. Cars were overturned. Springfield Jeremy got his jaw broken that night (remind me to tell you that story). A lot of people went to jail.
For the next two years, tail-gating at "The Meadows" was forbidden. The parking lots became mini police states. Park you car. Get the fuck out of your car. Go to the fucking show. Have a nice day. Partying of any kind was possible, but it was like fucking your girlfriend while your parents are home. You had to be so low key, it kind of took the fun out of it.
So, present day. Sixteen years later and there are few cops on Hartford's police force who were there for the riots (the '96 Pear Jam show was one of several shows where shit went down) at The Meadows. The pendulum has swung the other way. All the way the other way. Tailgating at the Comcast Theatre, now resembles Rush Week at Tulane. These kids are pounding booze like the shit is gonna run out. Carload after truckload of mostly college-aged concertgoers, set up tables with red Solo Cups, half-filled with beer and play "Beirut", while others waste no time pulling out their beer funnels (because you can't drink beer fast enough without gravity's assistance). And the police mostly ignore all of this behavior. Getting arrested at the Comcast Theatre has actually become a challenge.
So there we were surrounded by have thousands of very drunk adolescents, many of whom do not yet have tickets for the Rascal Flats concert, and then it happens...the show bangs out.
Everyone is caught off-guard. What should have been a nice little buy-for-twenty-sell-for-thirty grind has turned into a hundred dollar ticket. As you can guess, the response from the profoundly shitfaced fans to a quote of $100 per ticket ranges from incredulity to ridicule to "Go fuck yourself!"
For every ticket I sold, I got "motherfucked" a hundred times. And you can't talk shit back to these kids. They are drunk and fearless and ready to fight. You just take your lumps and move on.
Things were pretty hectic already. Then the blinks (counterfeit tickets) came out. Hundreds of them, like cardboard time-bombs set to go off throughout the night once the gate opened. Shit was about to get real.
Legitimate scalpers (I know. Shut up.) hate when a show gets blinked. Not only are people drunk and pissed off, but fans who get burned have no money to buy our real tickets. Unable to find who ripped them off, they turn their anger on us. "You guys all work together!"
Uh, no. We don't.
At 7pm, as if on cue, the fans pound their last jello shots and pour out of the lots and onto the only walkway which leads to the gate. Imagine ten thousand planes flown by drunk pilots landing on one runway over the course of an hour or so and you begin to get the idea of the chaos that ensues. All of us have to watch each other's back. A fan grabs four tickets out of Cadillac Frank's hand. Stupid. Where you gonna go, buddy? The fan and his buddy are standing in line at the gate, waiting to get in with the stolen tickets. Frank gets the cops. He gets his seats back and both kids get arrested.
Note to stupid people: We are selling tickets, not crack. If you steal from us, you will get arrested. I have seen this happen more than once.
The fucking blinkers are wreaking havoc. Teenaged girls in cowboy boots are crying. Their muscle-bound, overly tribal-tattooed boyfriends are trying to sell us the fake tickets after they get turned away at the gate.
"Yeah, these are fake tickets, bro."
"Um...er...uh...No they're not. We just don't want to go to the show anymore."
God, people are tools.
Those who have enough cash left over buy up our remaining tickets at the price they said we would never get. I know I'm a prick for saying this, but I get more than a little satisfaction when the people who told us we would eat all our tickets and no one would pay us $100 are there to see us sell out. Sorry.
A pretty, petite blonde who looks to be about twenty-two walks up to us.
"Do you guys have any tickets left?"
We are all out. It's late. Time to get some food or smoke some weed or go to the casino or go home to the kids, depending on which scalper we're talking about.
Justin, who is fond of the opiates and now gets referred to as "Junkstin" by some, found a ticket on the ground earlier which looks legit, but might have been scanned already. He asked us earlier, what we thought. No one said anything, but we all made our version of the, "I wouldn't sell it" face. He weakly offers it to this chic.
"Is this a real ticket?" She asks.
"Yup," Justin replies.
The girl heads to the gate. Everyone heads home. Snags and I were saying our goodbyes to Kentucky and Quiet Mike when the blonde stormed out of the gate with murder in her eyes. I figured she'd find Justin who would give her money back, no harm done.
I saw Justin the next day at the same show in Mansfield. He had a pretty good shiner.
"You got beat up by a girl, huh?"
"Yup."
He's a funny fuckin' dude.
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