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dykehayleywilliams · 8 months

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may I ask about the mitski curse or is it secret knowledge

*LONG POST INCOMING* It all started in 2016.

I've been a Mitski fan since 2014 when First Love/Late Spring premiered on Stereogum and desperately wanted to see her live. The chance finally came after I moved to New York; I had tickets for her show in February 2016 at The Knitting Factory. But then. A freeze hit the city that weekend, resulting in a pipe in the shitty apartment bursting so I missed the show because I had to wait for the emergency repair guy to come by. Okay, well that's a bummer, I though. I've been waiting for almost two years to see Mitski but surely I'll get another chance. July 2016. I was living in Texas for the summer, a few hours away from Austin, where Mitski had a show scheduled. Perfect! I can drive up to the show! My old, barely functioning truck can handle the drive! It did not. My car broke down two hours outside Austin.

November 2016. Third try to see Mitski in a year is the charm, right? Oh wait, I waited too long to buy a flight to my grandma's for thanksgiving and I had to fly out the day of the Mitski show because every other flight was $500 more expensive.

By 2017 I was starting to get worried. I had tickets to see her April 2017, but I got horrific food poisoning and couldn't get out of bed for three days.

I didn't get another try until late 2018 on the Be The Cowboy tour during her 4 night residency at Brooklyn Steel. Except Mitski's popularity had blown up significantly and I couldn't get tickets when they went on sale the first three shows. BUT THEN a fourth show was added, on a Monday night, and I finally got tickets! Perfect! Until I had a final project for one of my classes scheduled the same night that I could not miss without failing the class, and I desperately tried to find tickets for another night but none were available for under $300.

At that point I was convinced: I was cursed. There were no tour dates I was even able to TRY to make, and then in September 2019 Mitski played Summer Stage (two weeks after I moved from New York) and announced it would indefinitely be her last live show.

October 2021: Mitski releases Working for the Knife and announces a tour. The closest tour date to where I was living was 8 hours away, but I fought for my life for tickets and was determined I would finally break the curse.

I got COVID two days before Mitski's Denver show in March 2022.

BUT WAIT! Mitski was announced as one of the openers for HSLOT's European stadium leg! And my friends and I planned a bar trip to Scotland that lined up with the weekend of Harry's show in Glasgow! Okay, maybe seeing Mitski as an opener at a stadium show isn't ideal, but I was desperate. Except, of course, the stadium entry was a complete mess, and we didn't get into the show until the very end of Mitski's set. I had finally seen her live, but for 8 minutes and at what cost.

I wasn't happy, but I told myself it wasn't the end of the world because I already had plans to see Mitski at the All Things Go festival in October, so redemption would come soon enough. Then Hurricane Ian hit and my flight to DC that had a layover in Orlando was cancelled the day before I was supposed to leave. At that point, there was nothing I could do but laugh. Why did I think it would go any differently this time? No. I couldn't take it anymore. I dropped wayyyyy too much money on a different flight to DC with no layover. That flight was delayed by 5 hours, but I made it. Nothing was going to stop me.

Mitski's set starts. We're in the pit, I'm 5'2" so I'm on my tip toes, straining my neck to keep my eyes on Mitski. And then. Everyone's BeReals went off during Francis Forever and the crowd became a sea of phones. I was crushed. I had broken the curse, but 9 years too late.

#SORRY you were definitely expecting a short answer but this is one of the fundamental pieces of my lore #so yep. that's the mitski curse.

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rbbbff · 2 years

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This is an informational post about my experience with the 5/24 HSLOT 22 US Amex presales. Hoping it might help someone buying during verified fan presale tomorrow or general sale weds. @cuethetommo has great ticket insights and advice on their blog that I recommend reviewing and will reblog. i know this process is extremely anxiety-inducing and truly a capitalistic minefield and my heart goes out to anyone struggling with it/the unfairness/the prices/the US-centric tour sched/all the fucked up components that make this up! and yes i agree that Louis should be scolding Harry for this ticketing horrorshow every chance he can get.

TL;DR out of 3 presale invites I secured tickets to 2 shows, mid lower bowl in Austin ($199ea) and pit for MSG last show night ($199ea). i consider this a successful outing.

More detail:

Got presale invites for 3 shows: Sept 21 (MSG), Oct 2 (Austin), Oct 13 (Chi). I think I signed up for 10-11 shows during presale registration so maybe 30% success rate there.

The Austin & Chicago show presales were at the exact same time (?? why.) Due to date and venue preference I focused on Austin. Cleared & blocked my schedule for this time, got in the waiting room 10min early as advised, and got into the queue at 658 people in front of me. I wanted to get close seated tickets (like first ~3 rows lower bowl), so when I got in I started looking at those, while also trying to add pit tickets to my cart just in case. (Note: Even after re-entering the queue and trying for ~40min, I did not get pit tickets for Austin. Maybe this is obvious but it seems like if you want pit tickets, focus on snagging those first).

Every.single.ticket pit or otherwise i tried to add to my cart for 25min straight was "snagged by another fan". maddening. Finally found 3 seats which were exactly what i wanted (yay!) first row seated! and clicked through to checkout... only to see that Those tickets were $1144 EACH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WHAT IN THE PLATINUM PRICING. Abandoned in cart.

Back into the bloodbath and ultimately checked out with 3 mid lower bowl tix @ $199ea. Sec 119: $1144, Sec 117: $199. Okayyyy.

20 minutes later i queued for MSG, prayed and refreshed, refreshed right at <1min in the waiting room, got into the queue with only 258 people ahead of me. Entered, went right for 3 pit tix, got them on first try (!!!! PURE LUCK PLUS REFRESHING TIL MY FINGERS HURT) for $199ea and checked out breathing a gigantic sigh of RELIEF and gleeee.

Final thoughts:

this was my first REAL go-round for this; all my previous harry tickets (2019-2022) have been aftermarket purchases. $199 is not cheap but it is the cheapest Harry ticket I have purchased so far. I envy the twitter stans who can get aftermarket face value tix and not get scammed tbh, couldnt be me

Even if someone had an unlimited budget this process also requires the privilege of time/flexibility of schedule and just plain old LUCK

Sorry i cant share more insights into Chicago since TM really fucked me in making that sale the exact same time as Austin??? But by the time I logged in there seemed to be an extreme few amt of tickets left, and they also seemed more expensive than the Austin tix (but less so than MSG).

Austin venue is smallest (15K) with MSG being mid (20K) and United Center largest (23K) so thats a good thing to consider in terms of how close the seats are, etc

it is insane to me that a pit ticket and a mid lower bowl ticket are the same price, and a seat BETWEEN the two is over $1K. fuck dynamic pricing.

in the same fuck-dynamic-pricing vein: the equivalent mid lower bowl ticket that i got for $199 in Austin was $900 at MSG. Ugh.

it may mean nothing but i think continuously refreshing your TM screen while in the last ~1min of the waiting room has a chance to secure you a higher spot in the queue. could be wishful thinking. also ritualistic chanting seemed to help. kidding... or is it?

#i hope this helps #SOMEONE out there #i used all the nervous energy from the process to write this post #fuck ticketmaster #ticket stuff #also LOL that exactly during this process 5 more MSG shows were added #talk about manufactured scarcity sheeeeesh

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