It was Saturday, September 19, 1987.\u00a0 It was time to get sitting.<\/p>\n
Tickets to see U2 at the old Saint Paul Civic Center, for the Joshua Tree <\/em>tour, were going on sale at 9AM.\u00a0<\/p>\n And I was going to be there, come hell or high water.<\/p>\n In those days before I couldn’t do that – I had work to do.<\/p>\n But Saturday?\u00a0 That was me <\/em>time.\u00a0<\/p>\n I woke up at 1:30 in the morning, and jumped in the car.\u00a0 I parked in front of the James J. Hill mansion (to this day, my favorite free parking in town), and walked past Triangle Park down Kellogg to the Civic.\u00a0 I made it there just after 2AM.<\/p>\n I was probably number 1,000 in line.\u00a0 And it was cooold.<\/p>\n And so we waited.\u00a0<\/p>\n And waited.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n And waited.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n And waited.<\/p>\n Of course, I didn’t have all that much going on in my life at the time, so spending seven hours waiting in line So I stood in line.\u00a0 And waited.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n And waited.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n And waited.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Finally,\u00a0after seven hours, at 9AM sharp, the doors opened, and the line started to crawl ever so slowly forward.\u00a0 Word came back; they were letting people into the box office in groups of 20 or so.\u00a0<\/p>\n So we waited.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n And waited.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n And periodically stepped forward in increments of ten or fifteen feet or so, every couple of minutes.<\/p>\n The chill of the day baked away by\u00a0about 10AM.\u00a0 I started\u00a0wishing for water.\u00a0 Or a bathroom.\u00a0 Or both.\u00a0 But no, I was going to stay in line.<\/p>\n So I waited.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n And shuffled.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n And\u00a0waited some more.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n And shuffled some more.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n And so on.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n And so forth.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Finally – at\u00a0close to 1PM,\u00a0I made it to the big wooden sawhorse barricade that served as the “ropeline” for the queue.\u00a0 A big, jovial-looking Saint Paul cop was minding it, counting people off in groups of twenty.\u00a0\u00a0After 11 hours in line, I\u00a0was standing with my hands on the barricade, when the cop came out of the door.\u00a0 There were probably a solid 1,000 people in line behind me, still.\u00a0<\/p>\n “Folks”, he announced loudly, “the show has sold out”.<\/p>\n I stood, jaw sagging slowly from the weight of my teeth.\u00a0 My dry, dry teeth.<\/p>\n I think I swayed a bit, out of pure discouragement.<\/p>\n “So…” the cop continued, “I’m happy to announce a second show!”<\/p>\n And I was the third person into the box office to get the tickets.\u00a0<\/p>\n Stage left, first row of bleacher seats.\u00a0 Under Adam Clayton’s elbow.<\/p>\n I staggered up the hill, with stiff legs and stiffer fingers from clutching the pair of tickets.<\/p>\n Now, the hard part; finding a date to take.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It was Saturday, September 19, 1987.\u00a0 It was time to get sitting. Tickets to see U2 at the old Saint Paul Civic Center, for the Joshua Tree tour, were going on sale at 9AM.\u00a0 And I was going to be there, come hell or high water. In those days before Ticketbastard Ticketmaster choked the life […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-688","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-twenty-years-ago-today"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/688","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=688"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/688\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=688"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=688"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=688"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Ticketbastard<\/strike> Ticketmaster choked the life out of the concert business, you actually had to be <\/em>at the\u00a0box offices to get <\/em>the tickets.\u00a0 U2’s fans, of course, were dedicated – almost like Springsteen fans, even in the Twin Cities.\u00a0 \u00a0I’d actually seen people camping out on Wednesday afternoon on the old plaza on Kellogg Boulevard.\u00a0<\/p>\nfor tickets<\/strike> for the line to start moving wasn’t a real hit on my lifestyle.\u00a0 My little tech writing contract had ended; leaving me not especially interested in doing more of it.\u00a0 Voice-over work and freelance print reporting was going well; I’d landed a bunch of jobs in the previous month (hence, I could afford to go to a concert).\u00a0<\/p>\n