Our Tale of Two Cities by two manhattan kids: catherine & rachel

July 12, 2010

This is the story of a Craig’s List success. 

Once upon a time, a 20-something found herself enamored with Lady Gaga.  The music, the outfits, the interviews…this 20-something couldn’t get enough.  One day, while sitting in a purple seat at Madison Square Garden for an event, this young adult looked around the stadium and realized that the venue was not that large.  She reckoned that buying a ticket to the upcoming Lady Gaga show would be worthwhile even if it meant sitting in “nosebleed” seats.  That evening she went home from the MSG event, determined to buy a ticket to the Monster Ball.  Livenation, Ticketmaster, Stub Hub, Swickets…fail, fail, fail, and fail.  Tickets everywhere were either sold or selling for stratospheric prices.  The 20-something went to bed feeling defeated.

In the morning, she awoke with a new sense of determination and she set about finding another way to get tickets.  She began furiously emailing in response to ticket offerings she found on Craig’s List.  She screened to find the most “legit” sounding offers and she heard from a girl who seemed authentic enough.  They began a week-long correspondence and finally settled on a price, slightly higher than face value.

After picking up three tickets from the Craig’s List vendor’s boyfriend (in the lobby of the Park Avenue hedge fund that he works for), the 20-something tried hard not to fret and agonize about the validity of the tickets.  Everything seemed kosher, but after forking over a sizable quantity of a cash, it was hard not to worry a little bit that she would be turned away at MSG on the night of the Monster Ball.

The weeks leading up to the show were fraught with emotions, chief among them: excitement.  And, before long, the morning of July 9th came.  The 20-something, her newly minted 20-year-old sister, and one of her oldest 20-something friends walked, with held breath, towards the turnstyles at MSG with their printed tickets.  Success!  The tickets worked!  They found their seats and were pleasantly surprised by how good they were.

A beer and a half later, the lights dimmed, the crowd began to roar and a shadowy Lady Gaga emerged, singing “Dance in the Dark”.  And so began the most fun and energetic concert experience of a lifetime.

The end. 

Pictures from the show are below. 

Highlights: Gaga’s soulful rendition of “Speechless”, a heartfelt delivery of her new song “You and I”, her candid and sweetly sincere commentary between songs about her experience earlier that day during her Today Show performance, and the “Bad Romance” finale.

-R (in case you were wondering, that 20-something was me!)