Storymania - Woodside!! by Elio P Evangelista

Woodside!!
Elio P Evangelista

Woodside
by Elio Evangelista

When one of my favorite bands, Pearl Jam, came around to tour in New York, it wasn’t a small event. You see, the band had been in a heated battle with Ticket-master (Ticket-bastard) for some time claiming they held a monopoly on all concert venues. Since all New York venues sold tickets under the ticket organization, Pearl Jam had not played in the Big Apple for close to three years. However, the band struck a deal with a new ticket service in order to avoid using Ticket-master to sell tickets.

In the summer of 1996, Pearl Jam announced a tour that, for the first time in years, included two New York dates at Downing Stadium on Randall’s Island. Randall’s Island is located between Manhattan Island and Long Island. In essence, there are only two ways to get on and off the island, drive in or take a city bus. Unfortunately, both forms of transportation must use the same bridge. Therefore, there is actually only one way on and off the island. Being a true fan, I naturally attempted to buy tickets for the shows, but to no avail; both shows sold out in less than five minutes. I had all but given up hope of seeing the concert except that a week before the first of the two shows, Lenny, and old high school friend, informed me that five thousand more tickets were being added for the shows. I started to get excited but I reminded myself that there was a very good chance that I still couldn’t get tickets. If twenty thousand tickets had sold out in five minutes over the summer, surely it would take about a minute to sell out five thousand. Or so I thought.

Thursday came around, two days before the concert, and it was the day that the extra tickets went on sale. All day long I was getting a little antsy. I knew that in order to have a good shot at getting the tickets, I would have to prepare myself. So, I set up the phone in my dorm room to speed-dial the ticket company. I practiced a few times in case I got a busy signal. I think that I was able to dial, listen for a busy signal, and hang up the phone faster that most people could say the word "fast." Anyway, the moment of truth finally arrived.

My roommate and best friend from first grade, Pete, was also a huge fan of the band and so he set up camp in one of our hall-mate’s rooms. The tickets went on sale at seven o’clock. At 6:58 I started dialing the number. For the first few minutes I got a busy signal, and, like I said, I was able to hang up and dial before the time the second annoying buzz rang through the receiver. After a few minutes of constant busy signals, I began to get discouraged. As I was thinking, "I’m never going to get through," I heard the sound of the angels out of the receiver - it was actually ringing. But, because of the fluid motion I had been building up of hitting the speed-dial, listening for a busy signal, and then hanging up, I accidentally hung up the phone without realizing that I actually had gotten through. I almost screamed out and cursed myself aloud for my boobery. But, I was persistent and I called again and miraculously, the phone rang.

I ran through all the information they needed and I came out with two tickets to see Pearl Jam on September 28 at Randall’s Island. When I ran to tell my roommate, he was already giving his credit card information over the phone. He had bought four tickets. So now we had six tickets for Saturday’s show and only two people who could definitely go. After a few phone calls though, we were easily able to find a few friends to take the tickets off our hands.

Because of the way the ticket company is set up and because of the fact that the tickets went on sale two days before the show, we had to pick up the tickets in person at Yankee Stadium on the morning of the concert. It was supposed to be easy; my roommate and I had it all figured out. We would leave from school on the Long Island Railroad early enough to make it to Yankee Stadium in time to pick up the tickets as soon as they were being released.

Things started off smoothly enough except for the fact that when we got to the Stadium, there were already about a hundred people on line before us. The ticket vending was set up in one of the small parking lots across the street from the Stadium. There were two or three trailers where the reserved tickets could be picked up. Once the line started moving, we only had to wait fifteen minutes before getting up to the window where we could pick up the tickets. I picked up my two tickets without incident. However, little did I know the hell that lay before me was about to begin. As it turned out, Pete had accidentally used a maxxed out credit card. So, when he finally got to the window to pick the tickets up, they wouldn't give him his tickets.

At first it looked bleak, they told us there was nothing they could do for Pete. I started to call all those people who were supposed to be going with us to let them know that there was a small problem with the tickets. After a little while, we found out that there was a special window for the people who had problems with their ticket sales. After an hour of waiting on that line, we finally found out that Pete could pay for his tickets with another credit card. S, problem solved, we finally got the tickets and were off. After that close scare, I thought the rest of the day would be clear sailing. Unfortunately, my ordeal was not over just yet.

Pete and I hopped on the subway system and got home in time to round up our friends at Vinny’s; another high school friend. We took the 7 train to Woodside with all of our friends and we hopped on the bus that went directly to Randall's Island. Most of the people on the bus were already drunk when they got on. One guy just kept screaming out "Woodside!!" in a slightly nasal voice for no reason whatsoever. He would do it every five minute or so. The bus ride had taken a total of twenty minutes to get from mid-Queens to the Island. As we were about to actually get on the Island, I noticed that this guy had walked to the back door of the bus and started to relieve himself. I suppose that was somewhat of a reality check for me and I knew I was back in the city. I don't think I'll ever be able to use the back door of a bus again without thinking of that guy. Anyway, we got to the stadium with some time to spare.

When we entered the stadium, I went straight for the mosh pit. I knew that I would be able to get a better view of the whole show from the ground rather than on the stone risers that were substituted for seats. The opening bands went on at about 5:30. For the most part they were entertaining but I felt that after that unpleasant incident on the bus, we deserved to see what we came for. I looked up at the sky through the open air stadium and I noticed some ugly looking clouds off in the distance. I knew that if it started to rain, I’d have no place to go since I was in the middle of about five or six thousand people.

Finally, at about 7:30, Pearl Jam came out. They opened with Last Exit. Then they played Hail Hail, Animal, and Spin The Black Circle. I was really getting into the show when it started to rain. And when I say "rain," I don't mean a light drizzle falling on my head like the song describes, I mean "Let's build an arc before it's too late" rain. So, by the next song, the crowd, including myself of course, was drenched. I thought that the close call with the tickets at Yankee Stadium was bad; I thought that the guy peeing on the bus was bad; but standing on a grass field, drenched in pouring rain and feeling the mud gather at my feet was definitely going to take the cake. Now and then it seemed as though the rain had stopped but as soon as it did it started up again even worse.

Pearl Jam played to a drenched crowd for a little over two hours. They were excellent. It was great during Whipping when Eddie Vedder sang the line, "Don't need a raincoat I'm already wet," the crowd went nuts. At 9:45 they finished up the encores and we all emptied out of the stadium. I met all of my friends (which I had lost in the mosh pit) at around 10:00 near the spot where the buses were set up to take people back off the island. Because of the fact that there were two-thousand people waiting for five buses, you could say that we had a little bit of a hard time getting on one. We had to wait for a bus for an hour back to Woodside. By the time the first few buses left, there were still about a thousand people waiting for the same bus that I was waiting for. After about 15 minutes, a bus was spotted coming down the street. The whole crowd bum rushed the bus in a near-riot attempt at getting on. The cops finally came and broke it up. I think they ended up arresting someone right in front of me. That was actually pretty cool since I never saw anyone get arrested in real life.

Getting on the bus is a whole other story. I used my high school bus riding skills on the Q76 to bite and claw my way onto the bus. Lenny, who has an inherent string of good luck, had already gotten on a previous bus about a half an hour ago. Once I finally got on, the bus was filled well past its capacity and there were still about a hundred people outside pushing me further into the bus. As I was being crushed on all sides, I mustered up the strength to scream out, "I can see through time," ala Lisa Simpson.