A funny thing happened on the way to the Billy  Joel show Monday night. 

Monday nights are usually a tough night for most normal people to go to a concert so when a couple of friends bailed out at the last minute and my party of four was reduced to my son and I heading into NYC, I found myself with an extra pair of tickets in hand. 

We had left the house in plenty of time but with a little traffic. and a slightly tougher time than usual finding a parking space on the street, it was getting close to showtime when we arrived at Madison Square Garden. There weren’t a lot of people out front looking to buy tickets and the professional scdlpers were out in force. I normally stay clear of the professional scalpers but I was tired, it was already 8:30 and I wanted to cut my losses and get in to the show.

A scalper asked me what I wanted for the pair of nosebleed seats and I said I would take $50 for the pair or I would trade my four for two down low.

There was blood in the water and the sharks were circling. A scalper said he had two down low for my four up top. I looked at his two “Ticketmaster” tickets and knew that they did not look quite right. I looked the scalper in the eye and asked if these were good tickets and he said yes. I did not really want to sit up top for this show; it was getting late, and I figured I was about to eat two tickets anyway so I decided to roll the dice figuring the worst that could happen is that they were counterfeit tickets and we would be heading home early.

Well, the worst happened.

My son and I made our way through the multiple layers of security, pat downs, and metal detectors with no problem. When we got to the doors where the tickets are scanned the MSG employee took one look at the tickets and said they were counterfeit.

We hustled back to the steet in hopes of grabbing the guy who gave us the fake tickets but of course he was in the wind. I was more embarrassed by being taken by this guy than anything else. I broke one of my cardinal rules of not dealing with the professional scalpers for exactly what had occurred. Some guys are hustling to make a buck and are basically low level salesmen; others are thieves looking to rip you off and it is sometimes very difficult to discern between the two. New York City is full of street hustlers. 

I was off of my game that night and there is no one to blame for this particularly bad night but myself. Chalk one up for the bad guys but I will not be deterred. 

Last night my son and I ventured back out to NYC for redemption and a nice evening of musical entertainment at Town Hall featuring Seth Avett and Jessica Lea Mayfield who provided a show primarily of Elliot Smith tunes from their collaborative effort. They also mixed in Bob Dylan’s “Just Like a Woman” and a couple of Beatles tunes while the whole time playing in front of a home kitchen setting. This night took a bit of the sting out from our prior escapade into Manattan.

Let the buyer beware? Oh yeah!

A Matter of Trust

Rock on

GQ