Need to share this story because I'd love to know if others have had this happen.
Last night I went to a concert at the Barclays center in Brooklyn. I drank prior with my brother (we killed a fifth of vodka) and then took the subway over from my place. We were drunk. Yes. But we were not slurring our words, stumbling around, making a scene, or being loud/rowdy. I'm under no illusion that we looked like Mormon missionaries, but I also know I've been far drunker for other events and I definitely felt like we were both in control and well within the threshold of what is tolerable for a concert. Whatever that's worth.
I'll provide you the exact circumstances as they occurred:
We exited the subway and walked toward the Barclays center entrance (the main one). We presented our tickets and the rep said, "this isn't the general admission area for floor seating, you need to exit, take a right, and go around to the side entrance". So we did that, but it was a tight area because of the airport style security and there was a incessant stream of people coming through so in the process my brother shoulder-bumped a sign. The sign shook. We got out of that entrance area and began walking around toward the side entrance.
We walked on the sidewalk, past a VIP entrance where I asked the attendant whether we were going in the right direction -- she confirmed. We get to the entrance and they scan our ticket and go through the airport style security for a second time. Just as they are going to tear my ticket stub, a guy in his mid-to-late 20's in a shirt and khaki's pulls me out of the line and says, "are you two together?" pointing to my brother. I said, "yes". He then says, "come with me" and pulls us to the side. Now, I did not observe how my brother was faring in the security line but he claimed afterward he was fine.
He pulls us to the side and I ask "what's the matter?" He immediately heightens the tension by saying, "you guys are not going into the building" (these people are not at all skilled in negotiations or crisis management or soothing tension). I respond, "Are you kidding?". And he says, "no, you guys are on something. Our guys watched you from over there". I responded, "we're not on anything". He said, "your not going into the building". I then started to get heated but stayed relatively calm and said, "I want to talk to your boss, how are you qualified to arbitrarily identify me as being 'on something?". And he said back, "I'm the facilities manager here, I don't have a boss". I said, "OK, I want to talk to someone else within your line management then" and he said, "you can talk to the cops -- they're my boss". I said, "So you're going to reimburse me for these tickets then, right? Because I bought these on stubhub for 1.5 X face" and I pointed at him. So a guy behind me says, "sir, calm down and stop pointing or else we'll have to call the cops". And that point I throw my arms up against my body, open handed, like someone is pointing a gun at me and say, "hey, I'm calm. I'm just trying to understand why someone is telling me I can't go into an event I've been looking forward to for 3 months". So then he gets on the walkie and says some stuff and says, "cops are coming, they'll do a sobriety test and then you'll have a whole other set of problems"
I look at him dead in the eye at this point and say, "why are you doing this?" And he says back, "if you guys had told me from the beginning what you were on and been cool I may have let you in". I'm making direct and sustained eye contact with him at this point and say "I told you, we had a couple of drinks. That's it. What else do you want?". So finally he says, "OK, listen, if you guys take a walk to starbucks, get a coffee, come back in 10 minutes we'll get you in. but make sure you take the walk because my bosses are gonna be all over me for this one".
Now he admitted he had a boss, but I didn't want to go down that route so I just politely said, "OK, thank you, sounds good". And we walked away. We went into Best Buy and I purchased interstellar on blue ray for $8 (great deal) and then we walked back to that area about 20 minutes later. We got back to the same entrance and got through to the point where they were going to tear our tickets, and at this point they actually tore the barcode off and a ticket attendee says, "these two aren't allowed in the building. Lance was talking to them". So they took us to the side again, I said, "it's all sorted, Lance will tell you". They made us stand over to the side for 10 minutes without any information or purpose or direction. Then, magically, some person came over, motioned us to come in, and finally we got into the building.
What made me laugh was, entering the building you get hit with a plume of marijuana smoke and scent thats so strong it's like a hotbox.
The concert was a blast and I know the adage is "alls well that ends well", but the whole thing stunk to high heaven and seemed like pure, arbitrary BS. We're well mannered guys in our mid to late 20s -- sure we drank, but I thought I was well within a normal spectrum of concert-going behavior. Anyone else ever have a similar issue?
