Eager fans wait for their idol
by Seth Sulkin
They waited all night because they wanted to be close to beauty. Eight men spent Monday night camped out in front of the Assembly Hall so they’d be first in line to buy front row tickets to the Olivia Newton-John concert Sept. 17. Dave Wax, senior in LAS, was one of them. “I figure you can’t pass up an opportunity to see beauty this close,” he said.
All eight men stated various reasons for wanting the best tickets, including the poor chances getting a good ticket through a student lottery, the once-in-a-lifetime chance for front row seats and the opportunity to inhale some South Farm air. But mainly, they said they wanted to be close to Olivia’s well-known looks.
Leaning against the curved glass wall outside the ticket office at the Assembly Hall, they waited, anticipating the 9 a.m. Tuesday box office opening. They sat under the dark, muggy skies four playing Risk, one studying and three relaxing-all talking about seeing Newton-John perform.
“I will be sitting in the front row, but I’ll use binoculars anyway, said Jim Barr, senior in LAS. “I made extra sure I would get front row seats, I told everyone the box office opened at noon.”
The eight men trooped in by ones and twos, the first one, Mark Hutchinson, senior in LAS, arrived at 1 p.m. “My brother likes Olivia and I like her so I wanted to get front row,” he said. “This concert will also be filmed, so I want to get on camera.”
By 5:15 p.m. all eight had arrived, and at 5:30 p.m., they had a pizza delivered to the Assembly Hall.
After eating, they played baseball until dark and drank a few beers. Then four of them began playing Risk.
Around 9:30 p.m. when player Jeff Zebrowski, senior in LAS, dropped out, the skies were dark and the only lights out on that edge of campus were a couple of street lights and the lights inside the ticket office of the Assembly Hall. There three staff members continued working late, glancing curiously out the window every now and then to see how the squatters spent their time.
“Earlier, the ticket manager came out and talked with us,” said Tom Johanson, senior in mechanical engineering. “He was real nice and he told us there were plenty of front row seats left.”
Johanson added that seeing Olivia wasn’t his only reason for spending the night out there. “I wanted to be able to say I had slept overnight in college before a concert.”
The eight men said, though, that they did not expect to be spending a pleasant night. “The concrete is very hard,” said Monty Martin, sophomore in Commerce, one of four who did not bring a sleeping bag. “I’ve liked her for years and I couldn’t get anyone else to go from my floor at Taft, so I came anyway.”
One eager male, however, was not willing to sacrifice a night’s sleep for the best tickets. At 9 p.m., he ran over to where the group was camped out and asked if the ticket office gave out numbers instead of waiting in line.
When the group told him no and said he should stay and wait, he replied “It might rain tonight.” He then ran back to a waiting car and took off.
But the faithful went to sleep on the cold, hard pavement.