Soundtrack: Money, and Maybe a Tinge of Sympathy, Is What They Want
I’m sure you're devastated to hear the news that ticket scalpers around Fenway are having a tough go of it nowadays. Darnell McDonald and Scott Atchison’s attempt to become the Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber of NESN have -- earmuff your kids here, folks; this could be a shocker -- surprisingly fell flat.
But there is good news, everybody: These scalpers don’t work for the FDA.
“Let me ask you something,’’ (a scalper) says. “If you owned a store, and you sold milk, and all your milk was about to go bad, and everyone held out until the last minute to buy your milk, and you dropped the price, what would happen?’’He doesn’t wait for an answer. He explains that no one would be willing to buy milk at full price. The integrity of the product would be compromised.
Know what else compromises the integrity of milk? Pretty much anything.
With that said, I’ve never met quite as many upstanding, showered, genuinely cleanly gentleman as when I tried to scalp tickets during the Sox’s 2007 pennant run.
That’s the first phrase that comes to mind when thinking of these guys: Physically meticulous. I mean, who could pull off this outfit at work otherwise?
The shirtless man in the backwards cap is the most active among them.
But it’s not all Roman-Empire-business-casual fun for the scalpers this year, as Robert Mays explains in his tremendous piece today. Scalpers this summer are set to make only about what a teacher tends to make in his or her first year. Check out the faux injustice:
Rich claims he made about $100,000 in his first year re-selling tickets to NASCAR events and Sox games. This year, though, he says he’ll be lucky to bring in one-third of that.
Sorry if I can’t muster any sympathy here, but selling tickets above face value at a NASCAR event is like setting up an ice cream truck at the drop-off area of a day care center.
You can do this, sure, but public sympathy for your lack of, um, business is going to be close to null.
Today’s Soundtrack: Barrett Strong - Money (That’s What I Want)
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