My Strange Addiction:Tickets

This really is an addiction sometimes, and it comes in two parts.

First, I love seating charts. I pick out a random team and look at their chart to see their ticket price breakdown. I do it mainly to compare to Chicago, and think "If I lived in (this city), how much more or less would I pay to see a game?".

Usually, I'll log onto a team's website whenever I hear their name on SportsCenter or I'm watching a game on TV that's taking place at that stadium.

In fact, my very first 'dream job' was to be one of the people that determines the cutoff lines and prices for sections of the stadium for a professional team. Prices have to change somewhere, but what determines that? Strictly upper and lower level? Charge more for the first few rows of a section? Price it in relation to the center of the playing area? Each stadium is different, and I find it interesting to see which model a team uses.

Over the years, I've become very familiar with Chicago's stadiums (even the Cell, to some degree). I remember a section from one game, and compare it to another that I've been in. I pay attention to which way the section numbers go, and have a pretty good estimate of where a random section is.

I try to use this to my advantage as much as I can. Since I know these charts so well, I can think on my feet when buying tickets and know where the best deals are. We've all been on both sides of this situation; one seat that's an aisle apart and one row away from another costs almost twice as much as the one farther away. I always like to get the best deal, and snag the first seat in a pricing area. It keeps the cost much lower overall, and thus allows me to attend more games.

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Now for the other part; the one I feel you'll all appreciate more.

I bet most of you have some tickets you've saved from games. Either you felt like it was an important one, or just found them crumpled up in your pocket when you got home. The latter is how my collection started. My dad took me to a decent amount of Hawks games when I was very young. Our tickets would be on the kitchen table the next morning, and I would like to keep it as a memory. I would have to guess that this all started in the 1998-1999 season, because those are the oldest tickets I could find.

After a few years, I started going to games I would consider more important. Like my first Cubs game, or the first time I was at the renovated Soldier Field, albeit to see the Fire when they still played there.

A pile built up over time, and I didn't pay much attention to what I kept and threw out. I still didn't care all that much. That changed sometime around 2004.

Around that time, my Uncle Bob had put together a collage of his own ticket collection. It was almost like he spread the pile out with no regard for what order they were in. This caused them to overlap quite a bit. He took advantage of that disorganization, and made it look good.

He hung it in the hallway next to the kitchen at his house. To this day, I still look at it whenever I'm over. It was something I never thought of doing. There were plain Cubs tickets, Hawks ones from Chicago Stadium, along with much cooler things like Indy Car races and the Rolling Stones at Wembley Stadium in London.

It took me a few family gatherings to finally say "Damn. This is one of the coolest things I've ever seen". The light-bulb in my head went off.

I gathered all my tickets, and looked at what I had. It was basically my entire sporting life laid out right in front of me. I got a frame and a black poster board, then went to work.

This was the result:

I liked my uncle's, but I just couldn't decide which ones would be on the bottom layer and get somewhat covered. I wanted each one to be just as important as the others, so I fit them all in their own individual spots.

Some important ones: (some numbers are hard to see, but they're all there)

1. First Bears game
2. First Cubs game
3. Monday Night Football from Chambana
4. Minnesota Wild ticket from Dad's business trip
5. If you see someone wearing a blue shirt in the picture on the ticket, that's my dad. I'm right next to him.

It was awesome. I felt like this was the best art project I had ever done. I loved looking at it and remembering all the games, and even emailed a picture to Uncle Bob.

At first, I thought that would be it. I used all the tickets I had, and it took me quite a few years to have enough.

I started to pay attention to how my tickets looked. I really liked season tickets; the ones with fancy pictures that looked better than TicketMaster or box office ones. They were more interesting and fun to work with when organizing them on the poster board.

I became more aware with my saving and collecting, not letting a single ticket get thrown out. Before I knew it, a few years had gone by, and I had a huge stack. Some were very nice looking, but a lot were still boring and simple. I wanted to include them all. The solution? Go bigger.

Here's a comparison:

And a closeup of my second frame:

I noticed that I was shifting gears a little bit. I had some tickets from more prominent games, some that I considered novelties, and things different than sports.

The notations are as follows:

1.Conant Basketball's Super-Sectional game at NIU from freshman year
2. My first concert
3. Major League Lacrosse
4. My first day as a Bat Boy
5. Chicago Auto Show
6. Parking Passes
7. Cubs Skybox, Rooftop*, and Playoff appearences
8. The ticket that proves I was someone of a non-bandwagon Hawks fan in 2008-2009

*Didn't actually attend, unfortunately.

By now, I knew I would be doing this for a long, long time. It was a great way to remember which games I went to, and not let them all blend together with no distinct memory.

I went all out on my third frame. Right from the beginning, I thought about how each new ticket would fit. I started folding the tickets in half and putting them in my wallet to keep them mostly straight and dry if it was raining.

The creativeness went to a new level. Here it is:

Highlights:

1. 2009 NHL Winter Classic*
2. Metra ticket from the day Michael Jackson died
3. Sears and Hancock Observatories
4. Cubs Home opener and every ticket design from 2010*
5. Toronto's CN Tower
6. Blue Man Group and Fall Out Boy (with FOB confetti released at the concert)
7. 2010 Vancouver Olympics*

*Long story. A few aren't mine. I was never in Vancouver.

And finally, the one I just finished last week. As you'll see, I'm getting a little goofy and breaking the mold from when I first started. I like that. Having just sports is boring. I already have plenty of those displayed in the other frames I've completed. I want to be more original and include things that will keep people's interest if they're looking at one.

Highlights:

1. Amtrak
2. Conventions from my two favorite teams
3. 2009-2010 Conant Parking Pass
4. My very first paycheck from the Flyers
5. Last Flyers game I ever attended (and first Boomers' game)
6. College football at my own school
7. 2011 Pro Football Hall of Fame enshrinement ceremony
8. See Below

I had some extra space there at the top, and had nothing else that could fit there. My dad had some special tickets he'd saved over the years, and I was waiting for the right time to ask if I could have them and put them on display.

Moto GP at Indianapolis Motor Speedway
Eric Clapton at the UC
Pre-Season Bears in Chambana
Hawks tickets from the 1992 Stanley Cup Final (Game 4- "I saw Super Mario hoist the Cup"), the last season at Old Chicago Stadium, and the first season at the UC.

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On a slightly different note, I've hit up eBay looking for unique tickets from all different teams. A large number of the one's I bought were phantoms; made for a game that was never played, due mostly to a team not actually making the playoffs.

I have no idea what I'm going to do with them yet, but I know I'll think of some way to display them. Some are completely random and just meant to collect, like these:

2012 Angels and 2011 Brewers playoffs, Bulls lockout version, 2011-12 Bulls, 2011-12 OKC Thunder, 2011 Dallas Cowboys playoffs, 2011 Tampa Bay Rays, 2011-12 Boston Celtics playoffs, and 2011-12 NY Knicks playoffs.

There's also some other ones I specifically looked for that mean something to me:

2011 and 2012 Cubs full seasons, 2008 World Series game 7 at Wrigley, 2010-11 Blackhawks fill season with playoffs, ISU football and volleyball from this past fall to represent my first semester working in the ticket office.

This is something I really enjoy doing. I hope I can accumulate a huge collection and show my kids what important events I saw that took place back in the day. I think this will be the closest I'll ever get to putting fine art on my walls, too. The best part is that I saw most of the events from the frames, and put these together myself. If you go to as many games as I do, I hope I sparked your imagination and can you can create your own art and memories.