Hey all
This is the story about me and some others trying to get tickets in SF
today. I'm writing it from the point of view of Grendel (diary) becuase
it kept going through my head.
"the rain came to wash away my tears"
So a couple of days ago, Morgan enlightened us all that there was an SDRE
show in San Francisco on july 3rd. This is good, because I live in
hayward (CSU hayward, 30-40 miles from SF) and was planning to drive down
to irvine and see them on the 4th. Oh joy!
"I wanted to see them, but instead I destroyed my chance"
So this morning, I go over to maritime hall (the place where the show is)
to be the first kid on my block to have a shiny magic ticket. I ran into
Morgan and a friend. I decided to go into the building a little early
becuase it's in my nature to do so. Maritime Hall's offices are on the
third floor, and on my way up the stairs I saw an ATM. I went outside to
tell Morgan (they were talking about finding an ATM) and the only open
door to the place closed and locked behind me. Drat. We went around
checking out all the doors. I had the idea of throwing rocks at the
window and seeing if somebody would let us in (wel...the original idea was
to hurl a brick with a message through the window, but I believed they
would be reluctant to sell me a ticket if I did so. I watched too many
cartoons as a kid.) Morgan got on the phone and found a place that sells
tickets for Maritime, so I followed them on a sinuous and perplexing path
to Reckless Records on Haight and Masonic. When we got to there, I went
off to find parking, and that's the last I saw of them.
"Suede scars and time is right"
So I find parking and hoof it on over to the record store. I got inside,
and was overjoyed to see a Joy Division t-shirt on the wall. Cool, I can
attend to being a good fan of my other favorite band too. The clerk told
me that the guy who delivers the tickets doesn't come around until about
2pm. I needed to kill some time. I walk out of the store, and see that
I'm only a block from Ashbury (Haight and Ashbury). MMMmmmmm...the
memories. I was outside of a coffee shop on cole/haight singing SDRE
songs for about an hour. I freaked out this bum while singing Spade and
Parade. I guess "though I remove, spade and parade, the guilt and bones
through my sand castle" COULD unsettle the uninitiated. I followed up
with Joy Division's "Disorder" to really freak out before I went to ameoba
to kill some more time. Finally, it was 1:50, time to walk to the other
record store. I get back and they say that the guy hasn't brought the
tickets yet. I decided to browse around for a few minutes in case the guy
was just a little late, and they had used 7"'ers (I was looking for the
friday single, so I could make a better MP3 of spade and parade than the
one I downloaded off of the net.) Don't get too mad about the MP3...it's
the only way a lot of people will be able to ever hear that song (to my
knowlege). I left empty-handed and decided to hang out with my friends
(who live nearby, but weren't home earlier).
"It's raining tonight"
I got back to my car and found a parking ticket heinously posted under my
windshield wiper. Drat. I got to my friends house, and at about 5pm, I
called Reckless back to see if they got the tickets. The clerk (a
different one) told me that they hadn't gotten them, and on further
questioning, revealed that they didn't know when they would. Blast.
Curses. I went home, borrowed a credit card, and bought a ticket from
basstickets.com. I could have gotten a ticket in the city for $18, but I
ended up getting it online for 33.60 because of surcharges and S&H. Oh
well. It sure beats driving for several hundred miles, stopping only for
gas and nature calls, seeing SDRE, and driving all the way back. I'm not
saying that I won't still do that maybe (I might get "inspired" and
decide to drive down anyway, you never know where the day will take you.)
NE-way, The moral of the story is that because of my SDRE Fan-ness, I had
an interesting adventure in SF. Otherwise, I probably would have done
laundry or something.
Hope to see some of you there
Dan
