At Towson University, Joyce Sites and Matt Charen got the Springsteen tickets they wanted.
by FERN SHEN
Springsteen in Baltimore sold out in a nano-second on Friday. (Okay, it was technically about 20 minutes.) Now, it’s the recession and everybody is out hustling their Boss tickets at crazy prices.
“Wife is pregnant and says the concert is a terrible idea,” says someone from the DC suburbs posting on Craigslist. “Need to sell them and would like to buy a crib.”
Okay, you’ve got a wife and kids in Silver Spring, Jack, but would that make anyone more likely to pay what you are asking: $130 each for two tickets in the 1st Mariner Arena nosebleed section and $310 each for his two General Admission seats?
Whether or not this sob story is for real, it may not be necessary. The guy’s prices are on the high side but, chances are, he’ll get them, judging by the marketplace.
The 345 tickets Baltimore Springsteen tickets offered on StubHub at the moment are running generally about twice the face value. (Funny how tickets were available on the Internet before they officially went on sale.) There are seats in the premium lower section (in the 100s) selling for $1,295 apiece.
Bruce Springsteen is coming to 1st Mariner Arena on Nov. 20 and it will be the first time Mr. New Jersey has performed in downtown Baltimore since he opened for Chicago at the Arena in 1973. (He came to Towson University in 1977 and Painters Mill in Owings Mill in 1975.)
Line for Springsteen tickets at the Towson University ticket window.
It’s people like Matt Charen who are keeping prices high for the 60-year-old Garden State rocker. Well, people like Matt’s parents, really.
“These are the best tickets I’ve ever gotten for them,” said Charen, 17 who was the first person in line Friday at the Towson University ticket counter in the Student Union building, snagging four $98-apiece general admission tickets. “I got here at 6:45.”
One of the people in the generally well-behaved line had a laptop open and was working Ticketmaster’s online site at the same time he was waiting on a spot at the window. Everyone was on a cellphone talking to people who either were or were not getting shut out online as the ticket brokers snapped up seats.
One Springsteen fan who got skunked on Ticketmaster was Baltimore writer Michael Hill.
“The weird thing was when I first sent in my request (for 4, best available) it said your waiting time is five minutes,” Hill writes. “Then it kept going up, all the way to 13 minutes (as if people were being let in line ahead of me). Then it came back down and I got the process cannot be requested message. Stories said it sold out in 20 minutes and I was shut out in about five. Was that because I asked for four? Dunno. Is there a company more despised than Ticketmaster. I don’t think so.”
Even at face value, these ticket prices were not cheap.
“I just shelled out a lot of money for an aging rocker,” a man muttered, as he waited for the Towson machine to churn out his tickets.
Downtown the scene was much more hardcore, with people camped out outside the Arena for days.
Joyce Sites, the next person in line behind Charen, had tears in her eyes, she was so happy that she had been able to purchase three pairs of tickets at $98 apiece.
“I’m going to go with my sisters: this means we’ll get to go together,” said Sites, 69, of Harford County, who got up early and drove for an hour to get in that line. “I can’t believe it.”
