Friday, July 28, 2017

GABF Public Ticket Sale Looms

And here I thought tickets were impossible to come by back when you had to physically wait in line for them. I lined up overnight for tickets one time: waited all night in a sketchy city for the Ticketmaster location to open, only to find that this one wasn't open on Saturdays. Rushed down to another part of the city, where a department store had a Ticketmaster office hidden on a forgotten upper floor. Stayed up all night for mediocre seats. But all that has changed with the internet. Now you can (have to) be ready to click on tickets the second they go on sale, like I did for a beer release recently. One second, tickets not yet available. OK. Next second, tickets available: choose quantity. OK, I choose, click on NEXT. Sorry, this item is no longer available.
What.
The.
F.
It was available for all of five seconds, then gone. That's the reality of online ticket sales now. And it will be a struggle to get those GABF tickets in an age where everyone has discovered craft beer. They'll wait online so they can then wait in line to get into a place where they will line up over and over again to try beers. And you know what? IT'S SO WORTH IT. You know me. I don't get excited about much. But the feeling when you walk into the exhibit hall and hear the bagpipers and the buzz of all the other beer freaks there and there's all that wonderful beer waiting to be discovered...there's nothing like it!

So when the public sale begins on Wednesday, August 2nd at 12 EST (that's 10 am here in Albuquerque, you know), be on Ticketmaster and hope for the best. 3,800 beers are waiting to meet you.

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