I grew up going to the theater, to the ballet, to the symphony. Concerts and live music, dance, performance is something that is part of my background and part of my enjoyment of life.

In recent years it’s gotten way suckier to attend a performance for any number of reasons. The obvious is money – it’s something that you have to write off a lot, when you have to cut back.

It’s also the usual hassle factor – that getting a seat at a concert venue is more complicated than it used to be. Many halls and arenas and theaters offer easy ways to get seats; but as with “accessible” hotel rooms and accessible train seats, the easy ways don’t work for me. I always have to be the exception and call. And JESUS it’s a pain in the ASS to have to listen to endless recordings telling you how much easier it would be to just use their friggin website. Yeah. Right. I'd love to, really I would. I can’t so can you please turn it off? If I risk booking the hotel room on line I STILL gotta call and ensure they SAW the note about the ADA room.

The third pain in the butt about performance in recent years is the tendency on the part of SOME audiences – I know, those of you who think “symphony” won’t know this one – to stand UP during the entire damn performance. Even when I could get in for FREE into some local Seattle performance weekends I stopped going because I’d get to the place in plenty of time. I’d settle in, Stu would sit next to me….and then all these people would come and STAND IN FRONT OF US, and I would never see the performers, but spend 45 minutes looking at someone’s butt. Literally.

In a local newspaper's “rant & rave” column recently a superfan was upset at a complaint reading “could you please sit DOWN during the game" He claimed that standing up and yelling is part of the entertainment. If you’re such a weenie, stay home. Happily, they printed my reminder that some of us CAN’T stand up to watch the frackin’ game, and could you please SIT THE HELL DOWN so I could see the players I paid to come see. And not your backside. But it’s a given nowadays at many performances and events, that people STAND THE HELL UP the whole time, leaving me feeling overwhelmed, uncomfortable and wondering why I paid to come. Or not being able to see or hear very well because this mob of bodies is between me and the performers.

I never even consider going to shows at big arenas; there have actually been lawsuits filed on behalf of disabled attendees who are stuck in the handicapped seating and STILL can’t see the person they came to see – and paid BIG money for – because of this tendency to STAND UP in front of the stage. And there does not seem to be any way around this one.

So Stu just tried to get tickets to a performance so we could go out for my birthday. Not a big arena, not a big huge name, not a championship team, but a wonderful sounding string trio called “Pluck” that is described in the ads as a “cross between the Marx Brothers and Yo Yo Ma.” And there’s the OTHER reason that people like us don’t go to live performances much anymore. F*CKING Ticketmaster.

This is not new – there have been stories about this rip-off organization for years. And yet, even small venues use the bastards. HOW MUCH WOULD IT COST to pay someone to sit at the box office and take ticket orders? F*CKING Ticketmaster runs every damn box office, big or small and RIPS OFF the consumer for huge wads of money in order to sell a ticket to a G*DD*M string trio. They monopolize the system and charge huge amounts FOR WHAT? They can’t deal with handicapped seating either – the few times I dealt with them it was like asking them to perform brain surgery by email to call up the Big Deal Special Screen because every time the would try to get me a seat, it wasn’t one I could use but it ended up somehow as my fault. Not always but you could hear the aggravation.

So Stu goes to get seats at $28.50 each. By the time he’s done, they’re telling him to pay $78. Are you offended? I sure in hell am. Over TEN BUCKS APIECE IN SERVICE CHANGES??? For what service exactly? Do we get anything for this “service”? No. We MIGHT be able to get LUNCH FOR THAT somewhere of course.

Stu works where he cannot get to the theater during the day. I can get there – it means taking a bus in what is now crappy weather (not like other paces but this is ME and cold and wet HURT and poop, I don't wanna go all the way down there) to go to a box office that is open WEEKDAYS ONLY – and not all weekdays as it is but on Tuesday through Friday 11:00am - 2:30pm and 3:15pm - 6:00pm. Oh yes and “$1.50 per ticket facility fee is charged for Moore Theatre events. No other fees apply when purchasing tickets in person at the box office.”

So we’re still paying more than the ACTUAL PRICE OF THE TICKET for the HONOR of buying the fucking ticket at the box office. So it’s now $30 each. WHY DON’T they just SAY THAT?

And the best they offered Stu was “there will probably be tickets the day of the show”. It’s just so easy to just hop up and go down to the theater – especially given that we need special seating and we’d be taking the bus.

It’s not the $28 or $29 or $30 picket price. It’s that by the time Ticketmaster is done, they’ve added on another $10.50 – MORE THAN A THIRD of the ticket cost FOR WHAT?

This morning’s Seattle Times carried a story about the local symphony’s hiking of the cheaper subscription rates – going from $277 to $500. FIVE HUNDRED mind you – apparently because they don’t like seeing empty orchestra seats and they want to force those in the upper tiers to fill the orchestra. Now THAT’S GOOD thinking. Of course people will pay more. They don’t mind being jerked around so that someone will think it “looks better”. My friend Jane, who got a partial subscription this past year, has already written to say “thanks, we’ll spend our money elsewhere” and has gone to another theater for next year’s entertainment. Instead of lowering orchestra seats, they’re upping the cheap seats in order to FORCE those in those seats to pay more to attend. And get this – the “acting director stated specifically it was so that “said she wants to "see the main floor looking full and lush.” She doesn’t give a fuck about the patrons who want to attend the symphony who – like my friend – don’t have a lot of money but do want to support the arts, like the music and want to go to the symphony. Nope, this woman cares how it LOOKS.

When they built the new baseball stadium, they dumped a huge number of the cheap seats. When they remodeled the Key Arena, within the last 15 years, they added “luxury boxes”. Now they want to almost double the cost of the cheap seats at the symphony. And every year, there’s a tearing of the hair and a moaning and whining about how no one will go to the theater any more, how no one will attend live performance. Funny how when you treat people like CRAP, they tend to stay away. Whether it’s Dvorak, a touring company or a basketball game, we're being told that unless you are of a certain income level, you should stay home and not consider yourself part of the elite who apparently deserve to attend live performance. Hey, go watch a movie, okay, and leave the live performance to those of us who can afford it.