Attempted bribery, vehicular mishaps, and tears ensued. But nothing was as bad as a Ticketmaster queue.
Photo: Nick Robins-Early
It is 4:30 a.m. on Thursday morning and around 90 fans are standing in the freezing rain outside of Bowery Ballroom. In a few hours, hundreds more will join them in a queue that wraps around the Manhattan corner of Delancey and Bowery. They have come purely on faith that a Beatle will play a third secret concert at a 575-person venue, where appearances on Tuesday and Wednesday drew A-list stars and the sense of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. As one fan who had been there since the wee hours wrote on X, “New York’s hottest club is the 500 person line for the Paul McCartney show that doesn’t exist yet.”
Almost six decades since Londoners ran through the streets to glimpse the Beatles on a rooftop, 82-year-old Paul McCartney is resurrecting Beatlemania by way of Instagram (where he announced his shows each day). There have been campouts in just-over-freezing temperatures, instrumental singalongs, bouts of crying, and vehicular mishaps, all in the hopes of vying for a $50 ticket to a show on a stage one-165th the size of McCartney’s regular venues. In an era when trying to see your favorite artist up close typically involves losing a virtual battle with Ticketmaster, there’s something invigorating about standing in a queue (fans had to physically show up at the Bowery Ballroom to get their ticket), no anxious refreshing of devices necessary.
“It’s a trade-off,” Jack, a 32-year-old who lives in Bed-Stuy, tells me from the inside of an REI Half Dome tent he’d erected in front of the box office. “You fuckin’ regret it for the rest of your life if you don’t camp out to get a Paul McCartney ticket when you could have, or you do and you’re sleepy for a few days.”
Jack, who asks to use a pseudonym because he’s ditching his now-imperiled job working for the federal government, arrived at around 11 p.m. on Wednesday night, just in time to see celebrities like Anne Hathaway, Tom Hanks, and Jerry Seinfeld walking out of a previous show. He is third in line for Thursday’s supposed event and by far the most prepared to brave the elements. Peter, one spot ahead of Jack and a Ph.D. student from Boston, hopped on a bus when he heard about the shows and brought little more than a long orange scarf and headphones to listen to the audiobook of Patti Smith’s Just Kids.
“My dad put Rubber Soul on, and I became obsessed for years and years and years. I just love him,” Peter says. “I love the whole thing.”
The hysteria around getting tickets has grown increasingly intense since McCartney and Bowery Ballroom announced the first show late on Tuesday morning, which sold out in minutes. Fans showed up the next morning, correctly guessing McCartney would do another night and noticing the venue moved its previously scheduled event to another location. By Thursday morning, word was sufficiently out, and McCartney fan forums were flooded with posts urging people to show up earlier and earlier.
“It’s Paul McCartney, man. He’s a Beatle; that’s it. You gotta go see a Beatle,” says Adam, a 26-year-old chess teacher from Bushwick who arrived at 8 p.m. on Wednesday night and is visibly shivering. “Especially in a venue like this with no phones. Are you kidding me?”
Nearby, two brothers and their friend, who brought guitars with them from New Jersey, lead a rendition of “I Saw Her Standing There.” Several people are pacing up and down the crowd muttering a headcount to themselves to figure out their number in line. Others are offering money to cut ahead and are harshly rebuffed.
Over a hundred people were lined up along Bowery before 5 a.m., huddling under the scaffolding to avoid the rain.
Photo: Nick Robins-Early
Everyone who encounters the line seems to weigh how fast they want to join it against how much dignity they want to preserve. There are all-out sprinters. Others try to maintain decorum by long-striding into the queue. Most settle on a jog that looks like they’ve just heard their plane is boarding. When I stopped by the line on Wednesday, I heard a screech before turning to see a gray minivan taxi slam into a harried millennial darting across traffic. He collected his phone from the road, adjusted his beanie, and ran to a spot. “I hope that guy gets one,” a man next to me observed.
Fans who have seen McCartney live describe it as something akin to discovering that Santa Claus is not only real but about to play two hours of straight bangers. The people who have been to one of these Bowery Ballroom shows talk about it in even more surreal, almost hallucinatory terms. Pieter, a 34-year-old multimedia journalist from Crown Heights who made it to Wednesday night’s show, was 15 feet away from McCartney as a mini-mosh pit broke out during his “Golden Slumbers” suite encore. During “Hey Jude,” he turned around to see Paul Rudd and Jon Hamm arm in arm, singing along.
Almost everyone I speak with describes McCartney as an ever-present figure in their life and his music as part of core developmental memories. There is 64-year-old Michael, whose British nanny played him the Beatles and who still owns a family Meet the Beatles LP with the word “cute” written next to Paul’s name. Beth, 55, “was a latchkey kid, and the Beatles kept me company after school.” Cousins Sofia, 18, and Molly, 20, grew up listening to the Beatles in their grandparent’s music room and view fangirling over McCartney as part of their cultural inheritance.
“I am living through the girls who came before me in the ’60s,” Molly says, wearing a button that reads “I still love the Beatles.” “Justice for ‘Temporary Secretary’!” she yells, referencing a cult song off McCartney’s second solo album. “Are you guys talking about ‘Temporary Secretary’?” a man asks.
Yet all of them are at least 100 people back from the front of the line. As the hours drag on, there’s still no official announcement that McCartney is even playing, let alone a sign that they’ll progress far enough to get in to see it. Rumors circulate online and among the crowd. There is no show. There is a show but it’s Friday. Several argue that the dates on temporary no-parking notices are proof it is happening Thursday. Meanwhile, one woman has heard that it’s actually a secret Arcade Fire show, which is her reason for coming. “Don’t get me wrong, Paul McCartney’s great too,” she says.
At around 1 p.m., there is a cheer as venue staff begin handing out little blue raffle-size vouchers that will allow some people to buy tickets for one final show to be held on Friday, Valentine’s Day. “Don’t let anyone cut the line!” someone screams. The roll of blue vouchers doesn’t make it far. Altogether only 75 to 80 tickets are dolled out, the rest presumably reserved for insiders and celebrities. Someone in line curses Jerry Seinfeld. “Please, I have my teenage son with me,” one man tells a bouncer. “I have a 17-year-old son, too, and he can’t come either,” the bouncer responds.
The lucky dozens at the front of the line are elated and break out into the na-na-na-na chorus of “Hey Jude.” A ticketless husband encourages his ticketed wife to go on without him. “I feel alive!” Jack, who has packed up his tent, beams after claiming his ticket. “This is the best day of my life!”
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