The Ticket Booth

I spent a fair amount of my adolescence in a little glass booth on the sidewalk on 45th in the U District selling tickets at the Neptune. Almost every Friday and Saturday night from 1977 on past 1980 I sold tickets for the Rocky Horror Picture Show.



The booth was octagonal with glass from waist height up in front and to the sides, with a locking door behind. The booth was "outside" - the doors into the Neptune are behind it, and the public can walk all the way around the booth. The top of the booth approaches the bottom of the theater marquee so it looks built in and it's pretty solid.
The Rocky Horror crowd was usually pretty amiable. We had a good understanding worked out. They'd line up - claim their territory - starting from the right-most front door as you enter, which was my left-most door since I faced the street in the booth. The line would move back to the side walk, then West in front of the neighboring business, then wrap around the corner down onto Brooklyn. On a really nice summer evening at it's peak the line would then continue down Brooklyn along the Neptune and past it a further half block. A spontaneous block party every Friday and Saturday night, with cases of beer consumed and weed and pills and 'shrooms and who knows what all getting passed around and consumed.

I got along well with the crowd. I sold them their tickets and I was unfailingly nice and polite. An occasional belligerent drunk or really drugged out person needed to be dealt with, but I'd just hit the buzzer so that somebody inside would come out to deal with it. I was out there alone and couldn't leave the money unattended, so I was always somewhat isolated from the crowd. I was the dude who sold tickets but not the dude you drank or got high with. I kept a certain distance from the crowd and the fans. Not always, of course, but mostly, anyway.

I'd buzz along selling tickets and counting money and keeping an eye on the front of the crowd under the lights. We kept the crowd over on the West side so that the audience leaving the 9-ish show could leave using the East doors and avoid colliding with all of the drunk and stoned enthusiasts already camped out in front of the theater. We usually didn't have terribly large crowds for the regular movies so the doors wouldn't be open that long as the workers chased out the last of the regular crowd and restocked for Rocky. I almost never saw much of this end of things until after the movie started since I'd be out front selling tickets then locked in the office counting the money and filling out the forms.

I mostly got along well with the crowd, but we did run into one issue that was challenging. The Rocky Horror Picture Show is rated R which means nobody under 17 is admitted without a parent or guardian. This is a voluntary system in the US, so there is no actual legal requirement to enforce it. For the first year we pretty much ignored that and sold tickets to anybody who wanted them. We got complaints. More importantly someone complained to Twentieth Century Fox and the distributor. Our management was called and threatened with losing the film if we didn't enforce the limit.

I was told not to sell tickets to anyone below 17. I got some reaction from the crowd, but I told them we had to enforce it or we'd lose the Rocky Horror Picture Show. Fortunately there was a crowd of sympathetic fans standing around so I'm sure the kids got in anyway by having somebody else buy their tickets. I no time the average purchase went from 2 tickets to 6, and I don't think the crowd got any older.

We got further complaints, though, and the manager asked me how the underage kids were getting in. I told them the obvious answer - their friends buy their tickets. So the rules were revised: only 2 tickets per customer.

I didn't make the rule, and as a recent 16 year old myself I didn't appreciate the attempt to "ruin the fun" but I was honest and did my job as directed. For the first time I had to deal with a fair amount of annoyance from my customers and there wasn't that much I could do about it. I took it as a challenge to be unfailingly polite and positive, even chipper, about the whole thing. That mostly helped keep people from getting too upset so the most common unfavorable response was a "that sucks/is stupid" or an expletive or a grumble. I'm sure the kids mostly still got in, but at least we had finally made it a slightly obnoxious process. Apparently that was good enough because the distributor quit complaining and threatening to yank the film.

I finally had one asshole customer who got terribly upset by the 2 ticket limit and couldn't be calmed down. After arguing with me for 3 or 4 minutes he finally gave in and bought his 2 tickets. I handed him the tickets and change and he punched the glass window of the booth right in front of my face and cracked it. After 3 minutes of being nice to this asshole's escalating unpleasantness I was incensed. If I could have reached him I would've grabbed him and started pounding. Unfortunately he was on the other side of the cracked glass, I was locked into a little booth and surrounded by drunk and stoned fans who hadn't even noticed the action, and I couldn't leave the booth and the money. I hit the buzzer and held it down. In the minute it took for someone to come out the asshole had disappeared down the street and around the corner. We never saw him again.

Working in that booth taught me important lessons about empathy. I was stuck implementing a policy I didn't particularly like or believe in, that's how it works when you're the peon who has to deal with the public. The geniuses who dream thesre policies up won't get caught within a mile of the public, perish the thought. So when you're tempted to take your petty annoyance out on the poor employee who has to deal with you remember that he or she probably has to deal with ten or a hundred times more annoyance than you do. It's not their fault, and while being an asshole to someone who doesn't deserve it may make you feel better it also makes you an asshole.

I also learned positive lessons in empathy. By consistently being friendly, positive, and professional no matter how outlandishly the customer wsa dressed, no matter how freakish their behavior, no matter how drug addled, and just getting the needed business done cleanly and correctly with a minimum of fuss, I actually enjoyed a fair amount of empathy and sympathy from the crowd. I was able to use that to get the crowd to respond to my orders on several occasions.

I remember a late Fall day around 11:30, it had gotten dark early and was cool and damp. The crowd by the front door was up to it's usual antics lighting up bong hits. They were behind me and to the left and the crowd blocked the view from the street, so they felt pretty safe toking away. They knew the routine - the doors wouldn't open for 10 minutes yet so they were aggressively getting their buzzes on. I was facing away from them and politely not watching, but I could see the flickers of the lighters reflected in the window that faced the opposite direction. It made an interesting orange flickering overlay on the angled panel, moving and flickering for 5 or 10 seconds then stopping as the next bong hit was completed. Then I noticed another flickering orange light that lasted a bit longer and started to spread. Huh? I turned and looked and I saw that one of the regulars was holding his lighter up to the "You will be subject to search on entry" sign on the front door.

I could picture it: stoned, buzzing, a little reaction to the authoritarian tone of the sign, a little pyromania, the next thing you know you're lighting the sign and the flames look cool as you buzz along...

I sang in the choir at school since the 7th grade so I knew how to use my diaphragm and had training. I took a deep breath, leaned back in my chair against the door, opened the lock and stuck my head out the door towards the corner where the bone head was lighting the poster-board and boomed out "Hey asshole put that out right now!"

The acoustics out there are pretty good - a stone floor and a reasonably low and sonically "bright" roof to enclose sound, and the idiot was in the corner where the walls would focus my voice.

He literally jumped in the air at my voice and whipped his hands out and brushed out the fire before he landed. He turned away from me and his head slumped - he did not want to meet my eye. I knew this guy from selling him tickets 20 times already even if I didn't know his name, and he knew me too. He didn't want to get permanently kicked out and I knew he'd never do anything like that again, so I just pulled my head back in, locked the door, and turned to the next customer and said "how many tickets?"

It did give me an odd perspective - I always thought of myself as the lowest of the low, the guy they send out to deal with the public so they don't have to. I hadn't really noticed that still left me in a position of power as far as the public was concerned.

The window getting cracked in my face was my worst experience in the booth, and considering I sold tickets to over 100,000 Rocky Horror fans who had been drinking, smoking and drugging for an indeterminate amount of time I'd say I got off pretty lucky.

I took one day off on a Friday so I could get to bed early since I had to take my SAT at 8AM in the morning so they had someone else sell tickets to Rocky for the first time in over a year. That night some big dude got thrown out for fighting and decided to try to break into the booth by kicking in the back door. My coworker told me about sitting in that little booth, watching this 6' 6" dude taking huge front kicks at the door, watching the door bow and crack as he held the button down for dear life, praying for officer Bob to get out there quick and deal with the situation. Nothing that bad ever happened when I was there. Apparently officer Bob came out before the nut job could get through the door and proceeded to take him down and sit on him until backup police came and cuffed and arrested him and hauled him away. I'm almost sorry I missed it, but being there for violence always turns out to be an unpleasant experience, more funny in the telling than the living. I just don't like being around violence.

Most Friday and Saturday nights weren't that crazy, though. On most weekends a loud verbal altercation or a puking idiot was about the worst you dealt with.

After letting the crowds in 3 or 4 of us would go out in a group and bag up all the trash and sweep up the broken glass. A few hundred people can consume an amazing amount of beer and they weren't shy about it. Since we'd hired officer Bob they couldn't bring it in any more, so they just got there an hour early with a group and drank a case or two before getting in.

I suppose most people wouldn't fondly remember sweeping up broken glass and cleaning up puke but for me it was an integral part of a fascinating adolescence. It kept me out of trouble, anyway.