10 sept. 21, 2016
dailyorange.com pulp@dailyorange.com
juice jam
Black market concert tickets sell at triple original value By Joe Bloss asst. copy editor
Tickets to University Union’s Juice Jam Music Festival are hot. Hot enough that some students stood in line for two hours before the tickets went on sale. Hot enough that all 9,500 sold out only four days after being released. And, maybe most interestingly, hot enough to ignite a secondary market that prices tickets over triple the $20 face value. These black market ticket sales are mainly coordinated through Facebook. The social networking site is home to student-created groups for each graduating class with several thousand members each. Most days, posts in these groups consist of student organizations self-promoting, researchers looking for some help on a survey, or someone wondering if anyone found their wallet last night. But once Juice Jam tickets sell out, these groups are inundated with posts from both buyers and sellers who can communicate through the site’s direct messaging feature. For some sellers, Juice Jam is an opportunity to make money off those who tried too late to buy a ticket. Others
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drive-ins Owners Association. In conversations with New York State drive-in owners, they said staying open isn’t a secret recipe of nostalgia, snack bar food and selecting the right movies; it lies somewhere in the randomness of chance. They’re a physical link to the past, a link that weakens every year as drive-ins continue to close. One of the biggest factors is the physical location of the drive-in, said Rick Cohen, owner of the Transit Drive-in Theatre near Buffalo. When drive-ins were built, they were mainly placed on cheap farmland. But as communities grew, the need for land increased and property value went up. Driveins weren’t practical. “We are only open in the evenings, pretty much have two shows a night between 8 p.m. and midnight, and the majority of our business is only happening on the weekend, and on top of that in the northeast it’s seasonal,” Cohen said. “Six months out of the year you aren’t even open for business, so how can you justify it being open?” There used to be five drive-ins in Onondaga County, some just a short drive from the Syracuse University campus, but their imprints have long since faded. But even a perfect location doesn’t guarantee success; the switch from film to digital was too big of a leap for some owners, while others didn’t have family or staff willing to continue the demanding seasonal job. Cohen, 48, still has a long time before he retires, but doesn’t have an heir to the largest drive-in theater in the northeast. Transit boasts five screens and a sprawling, rocky parking lot in a prime location between Buffalo and Niagara Falls. “My family doesn’t want anything to do with it,” Cohen said. “Maybe I will send out some golden tickets, and be like Willy Wonka, when that time comes, and find somebody with a good heart that wants to keep it open.” On a cool September night at the end of drive-in season, John Nagelschmidt Jr., the Midway’s co-heir, is leaning against the far wall of the projection booth.
have just decided for whatever reason, they don’t want to attend the concert anymore. After all, the lineup was announced around 5 p.m. on Friday, Sept. 9 and the tickets went on sale the next day at noon. That is not a lot of time to make a decision, and waiting too long could mean you don’t get a ticket at all. To avoid this problem, sophomore political science and policy studies double major Mary Storholm was one of the very first people to purchase a ticket. She waited in line for two hours before the box office opened at the Carrier Dome. But while grabbing lunch at Shaw Dining Center afterwards, someone stole the tickets out of her backpack. She said they never turned up after a thorough and frantic search, and the box office couldn’t help either — without any method of deactivating the original tickets, Storholm was out of luck. Of course, with the crowded secondary market, Storholm could just purchase some replacements from another student selling their tickets, right? She’d rather not. At least not at the prices that have been offered to her on Facebook.
“What year were you born?” he asks. “1996.” “Was it in the summer time?” “Yeah, actually, Aug. 9.” Turning to a small desk in the corner, he rifles through piles of miscellaneous junk, before pulling out a tattered notebook. Quickly, turning the stained and faded pages, he points with a yellowed smoker’s fingertip toward the bottom of the page. Aug. 9-15 Hamlet The Spy Twister The Arrival The small book, which begins in the ‘70s, acts as a chronicle of both movies that define popular culture and the drive-in customers’ most intimate moments. A small child seeing an unimaginable world during “Star Wars IV: Empire Strikes Back.” A tentative first kiss that years later ends at the altar. A widow sprinkling the ashes of her husband at the spot they had their first date. “It just seems to be a neat little escape for people,” Nagelschmidt Jr. said. “It’s sort of frozen in time.” At a quick glance, it’s easy to see what he means. The original 35mm film cartoons and graphics still crackle on the screen before the movie and during intermission. Cartoon snack bar foods dance across the screen singing, “Let’s all go to the Lobby,” shortly after a psychedelic 1960s Pepsi commercial flashed madly proclaiming, “Son of a gun, it’s refreshment time!” The snack bar’s early-1900s-style art deco curves gently glow with teal and white carnival lights, beckoning customers into the theater’s main source of revenue. The theater is nestled against a wooded backdrop that gives no hints of the current year. But a closer look muddles that nostalgic vision. 2000s-era automobiles sit in the audience pointed at jagged angles toward the recently-installed 80x40 steel screen. Movies are shipped to the theater as hard drives that look more like GameCube cartridges than film reels. Nagelschmidt Sr., 73, notices every difference, and oftentimes misses the way things used to be. He started working at the drive-in when he was 17, as a part-time projectionist. He managed the place into the ’80s, when the
“I won’t pay those prices out of spite, even if it means missing out on Juice Jam,” Storholm said in a text message. “These people bought an extra ticket hoping to make money off of equally as broke college kids.” Plenty of others have had similar troubles. Sara Park, a former SU student who has since transferred to Monroe Community College in Rochester, New York, saw the Juice Jam lineup and knew she had to try to come back for the day. Since tickets aren’t available online like they are for UU’s big spring concert, Block Party, she was forced to resort to the secondary market. Her efforts weren’t any more successful than Storholm’s. “I’ve lost tickets from two different sellers because other people bid way higher than I’m willing to pay,” Park said in a text message. “The highest I’ve seen is $70 for one ticket, $100 for two.” Alex Van Siclen, an undecided sophomore in the College of Arts and Sciences, has seen prices in the same range. She has been trying to buy two tickets and said that attempts to talk down the prices from sellers don’t do much. They’ll lower them by $5, if anything, she said. The university has tried to limit scalping
by implementing rules for ticket sales. A valid SU I.D. must be presented at the point of sale. To prevent any one person or group from stockpiling tickets, the maximum number of tickets allowed to be sold in one transaction is two. But that still opens the door for students like Chris Seager to make a quick profit. Seager, a sophomore film major who purchased one ticket for himself and one to sell, said he views making a profit as “mildly important.” “I just wanted to be able to make an extra few bucks by selling it and maybe even out the cost of my ticket as well so it will basically be a free concert,” he said in a text message. There are six artists performing at the festival — including some big names like Fetty Wap and Tove Lo — and it costs money to bring them in. UU declined to comment on the matter of the secondary ticket market. Seager, who sold his ticket Monday for $30, wasn’t worried about finding a buyer. He said there seems to always be people still looking — and he’s right. The Facebook posts keep coming. Juice Jam is still a hot ticket. jtbloss@syr.edu
A retro photograph of the Midway shows the outdoor speakers used for decades, before it made the switch to radio transmission. courtesy of heidi nagelschmidt
owners asked if he wanted to buy it. He couldn’t refuse. His normally tepid and thoughtful voice picks up momentum whenever he talks about the past. “This machine still works,” he said, tapping the 35mm film projector. Pulling a side panel, he talks through the old film projection system. His son stands close to his side, taking careful mental notes. “The film has marks on it — little dots, and you would watch the screen. There would be a little bell here at the top, and when it rang you had 30 seconds to switch projectors,” said Nagelschmidt, wearing a black shirt, with the words “I helped rebuild the Midway” on his chest. If you timed it right, it would happen between frames, and no one would notice the change. The drive-in is changing light sources; the family hopes no one notices. It’s the mandatory switch from old to new while trying to hold onto the magic of yesterday. Nagelschmidt Jr., 45, walks to a small microphone hanging from a large computer. He makes the preview and intermission announcements, a role his father held for decades. “You said one too many triple features,” Nagelschmidt Sr. said. “I think I said quadruple.” “You did all right with all the attention.”
The duo works in quiet tandem throughout the night, ensuring that guests have their own individual experience that doesn’t encroach on the whole. Nagelschmidt Jr. does the heavy lifting. His eyes constantly shift to the lot, in search of accidentally-turned-on headlights, teenagers trying to sneak in from the road and the occasional dead car battery. His father looks on, chats with regulars and ensures the night goes smoothly. His long white hair and matching white beard are instantly recognizable. Even if you didn’t know he was the owner, you could tell, as every footstep is planted confidently in his domain. During a free moment toward the end of the second movie, Nagelschmidt Jr. lights a cigarette outside the projection booth. “I’m glad you’re here. He doesn’t talk about a lot of this older stuff,” he says, then pauses and looks toward a minivan whose headlights turn on, but just as quickly turn off. “Until recently, I didn’t even know he wanted me to take over.” He leans tiredly against the projection booth door, and looks at the place he grew up — his second home. He takes a long drag and nods his head. “This place is magical…” but before he could finish his thought, the minivan’s lights flick on and he disappears into the night. jagedets@syr.edu | @JacobGedetsis