"An’ me, I nearly got busted/An’ wouldn’t it be my luck/To get caught without a ticket/And be discovered beneath a truck...."
Sang Bob Dylan, in his most-Bob-Dylan song, "Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again."I'm just trying to read The New York Times* and the headline is "Handing Out Free Tickets, Mamdani Says Theater Should Not Be 'a Luxury.'"
What's with these politicians handing out free tickets? I'm suspicious, but maybe the mayor's just flaky, pie-in-the-sky.
“The shared laughter in a crowded theater, the eager debrief after a musical, the heavy silence that hangs over all of us in a drama — these are moments that every New Yorker deserves,” Mamdani said later, explaining the initiative during a news conference at one of the festival’s venues, Brooklyn College’s Leonard and Claire Tow Center for the Performing Arts.
That quote is wild. What man of the people would say "the eager debrief after a musical"? He seems like more of a poet... an abstruse poet.
There was once a country ruled by a poet. It was Václav Havel, the last president of Czechoslovakia.
_________________________________
* If you're with me in Bob Dylandom, you just thought "shoot a few holes, blow their minds." But I don't like seeing those words today, in the shadow of the killing of Renee Good, and there they are along with "showing ev’ryone his gun" and "discovered beneath a truck" — truck ≈ SUV.
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Dylan’s not a very good source on crime.
Ruben Carter was guilty as hell.
Theater kids, get up there and do the show for free!
And now I'm wondering whether Texas is still loading up tour busses with illegal immigrants and sending them off to see matinee performances of Hamilton.
..the eager debrief after a musical..
Well, this is a guy that was acting like he was getting security briefings about Venezuela; which turned out to be "security breifings" from his own staff (explaining to him that Venezuela was a country in South America).. so he Obviously likes the word "brief"
"Deserve" is doing a lot of work here. Your right to X = my obligation to provide you with X.
There was once a country ruled over by a poet... His name was Mao.
That should have been written: There once was a poet who rule over a country. It was Mao.
I bet if anyone checked closely, we would find Mandami funneling money to these theater companies to cover these “free shows”, and that money is greater than what they made selling their product on the free market.
It's a long, long drop from Vaclev Havel to Zohran Mamdami.
Modern 'socialism' doesn't concern itself with controlling the means of production. It is all about distributing the fruits of that production. "The saps and rubes will keep on producing" is the underlying assumption. Maybe true.
There's already the TKTS booth in Times Square that sells cut-rate same-day Broadway tickets. The theatres are willing to lose a bit of money so they don't lose even more money, and so they can claim full houses. Not a huge step for the city to either pay the TKTS price for you, or strongarm the theatres into just giving the seats away. And someone in a reduced price or free seat is probably still going to buy $20 drinks and $50 T-shirts. Might have some problems if you truck in unwilling school groups for enrichment. But if you let the ticket recipients self-select, it could be win-win.
Reminds me of the I Love New York commercials of the 70s, with Broadway casts trying to convince tourists it was safe.
https://youtu.be/vS_H9ak7asQ?si=u2uhaGqdjQGwnr5b
CC, JSM
Are people forced to go even if they don’t want to? A lot of theater is dreck. And under this scenario, all of it will be.
The killing of Renee Good was a just and necessary thing.
People need to understand that the consequences of attacking and attempting to murder a federal agent are that you are likely going to be killed.
It's also good that she was killed so publicly. So that this message can spread far and wide amongst the Democrats who so desperately need to hear this message.
We will kill you if you attack federal ICE agents.
Shows that aren't selling out are better off letting in some young people for free. It makes that performance better, having a full house, and it might create a future market. Get new people excited about theater and maybe they will become paying customers.
Bob who?
Theatre tickets shirley
Get new people excited about theater and maybe they will become paying customers.
Or maybe they will just insist that all theaters are "free," that housing, food, healthcare and transportation are "free," and everything will go completely to shit.
We have all seen this movie way too many times before.
Broadway ticket pricing is still in the dark ages. Unlike, say airlines or more recently sports, where prices now adjust to reflect actual demand, Broadway is still stuck in the world of one (high) fixed price, whether the show is sold out or half empty. TKTS is not a real option (same day shitty seats) if I need to line up a sitter, dinner, etc.
There are plenty of good-not-great Broadway shows that I would go see at $80, but not at $190. And so those seats go empty. Market failure—both sides lose.
Shorter ann at 727:
"I miss the young bodies on campus. Pay the kids or bribe them with free tickets so I don't feel so old sitting with all the white hairs when I venture out of the house and do theater..."
Maybe pay the boys to produce grandchildren,ann? Alas, young meade proves long in the tooth despite his relative youth. You didn't emotionally castrate those two gay sons, did you?
If you have to line up a sitter and plan dinner, you're not young. Hth
Treating readers like mushrooms
Mamdani's tardy response to two NYPD shootings draws blowback -- including a miffed Commish Tisch | New York Post https://share.google/zjCVLRkULSAyrhlL8
"... these are moments that every New Yorker deserves..."
Just pondering that one, and speculating whether there could be some truly deserving moments coming down the pike, for New Yorker's delectation.
Free Stuff ! But if it requires the fruits of someone else's labor, then it's not a 'right'.
"Deserve" is doing a lot of work here. Your right to X = my obligation to provide you with X.
As is "free" - someone is paying for the show to go on, and here it is very likely taxpayers (both city, state and federal) who themselves will never get to see the show that are paying.
Two things the Soviets managed not to mess up too badly: public education and high culture. You learned about Russian classics in the public (only) schools, and you could go see them at the Mariinsky and other great theatres at dirt-cheap prices.
Of course the Soviets mostly built on a preexisting Russian culture. Madmani &co are trying to tear down American culture. CC, JSM
Grateful Dead did a nice cover of "Stuck inside..."
What's up with the fonts?
Also: I don't know if I agree that theater is automatically beneficial to people. I used to be a theater kid; I certainly loved performing, but it was not true that all performances were worth the time of the people in the audience. And these days I can readily imagine that the hectoring from the stage would make me hate New York (more)*, which is also not a good use of my emotional energy.
* I used to hate New York because every time we went there (it was an easy day trip from the Philadelphia area, so we took the kids pretty often), my frugal husband, who got to go and stay there on business regularly and therefore experience the good things about New York, balked at taking the family to anything that cost much money. So we ALWAYS had to go to Central Park - our daughter in particular curls her lip every time the "cool climbing rocks" are mentioned - and we ALWAYS had to eat food from food trucks while standing on the street.
Now, of course, I have other reasons to hate it that don't have to do with my husband's cobweb-covered wallet.
Free tickets!! Buying votes is as old as democracy and it always leads to oligarchy. The only difference in this case is Mamdani is taking the short route to chaos. There are no more tickets than the lawful capacity of the theatre, and there are far more people who want tickets than can have them.
Marxist rockers tried this stunt several times, and the result was always the same: Free concert!! Riot. Injury and sometimes death. People will scramble for Mamdani's "free stuff". Demand will exceed supply. A few will be grateful, but far more will be resentful. Tsar Nicholas II tried this shit, and he got overthrown and murdered for it in the end.
Mamdani isn't very bright. He's an heir to wealth -- a spender rather than a creator. If he had built his own fortune, he'd understand enough basic economics to avoid the inevitable consequences of scarcity.
What's with these politicians handing out free tickets? I'm suspicious, but maybe the mayor's just flaky, pie-in-the-sky.
At the center of socialist economic theory there is only one core concept: Slavery.
Mamdani doesn't believe anyone should be paid to do what he tells them to do.
They should just do it or be killed.
When I was in high school, I ushered at the Houston Music Hall. Arrive about 2 hours for the show, work for about 90 minutes, and you got a free show. I saw several musicals, often 2 to 4 times.
tommyesq said...
"Deserve" is doing a lot of work here. Your right to X = my obligation to provide you with X.
As is "free" - someone is paying for the show to go on, and here it is very likely taxpayers (both city, state and federal) who themselves will never get to see the show that are paying.
It is always slavery.
Mamdani's goal is to bring back slavery.
"Shows that aren't selling out are better off letting in some young people for free. It makes that performance better, having a full house, and it might create a future market. Get new people excited about theater and maybe they will become paying customers."
Ann's suggestion overlooks a key economic issue: moral hazard. By routinely offering free entry to young people for unsold seats, theaters would create an incentive for those potential customers to delay or avoid buying tickets altogether. People might rationally wait until the last minute, knowing they could get in for free if the show doesn't sell out—effectively "insuring" themselves against the cost of admission without bearing the full consequences of their decision. This behavioral shift reduces upfront ticket sales, making it more likely that shows won't sell out in the first place, which perpetuates the problem and could lower overall revenue. What starts as a well-intentioned strategy to build future demand risks eroding the current paying market instead, as people game the system to free-ride.
I fear her comment is as lacking in economic understanding as Mamdani's approach to the issue.
Ann Althouse said...
Shows that aren't selling out are better off letting in some young people for free. It makes that performance better, having a full house, and it might create a future market. Get new people excited about theater and maybe they will become paying customers.
You are assuming that people are good and everyone is a net positive. History is not on your side.
The same good or service is worth more to some people than to others. If you let some people in for free you make the people who were willing to pay for your service feel like chumps.
Don't ever make the people who actually like you feel like chumps.
It is usually better to have one person who actually likes you in the place than 10 people who don't give a shit.
The people who don't give a shit tend to break stuff and poop in the corner. There are a lot of people who do not make the world a better place.
Cogitor said...
Ann's suggestion overlooks a key economic issue: moral hazard. By routinely offering free entry to young people for unsold seats, theaters would create an incentive for those potential customers to delay or avoid buying tickets altogether.
I think it is more in the realm of degrading the price elasticity and the perceived value of your good or service.
The moral hazard is increased because you have a bunch of people who don't give a shit about you in your event. They have no incentive to respect you or the people who paid to enter the event.
Letting people on the subways for free will ensure that you have people on the subways that don't care about the subways or the other people on the subway.
If you can't charge an entrance fee for your event your event probably doesn't have value.
John mosby, meet Money Manager.
The theaters aren't losing money by selling unsold seats for a discount. If they insist on full price and the seat stays unsold, they are gaining nothing for the seat where they could be gaining something if they sold it at a reduced price.
“Shows that aren't selling out are better off letting in some young people for free. It makes that performance better, having a full house, and it might create a future market. “
But this is not Madison, this is New York City. You would have significant audience participation in the show. And I don’t see how you could allow only young people since age is a protected class. Perhaps you could tie it in with schools and be lega.
"Letting people on the subways for free will ensure that you have people on the subways that don't care about the subways or the other people on the subway."
This reminds me Bernie Sander's admiration of the Moscow Central Station, one of Joseph Stalin's signal achievements.
"Da marble floors, dere so clean. And da chandeliers!", gushed that famous Marxist who owns three homes and lots of other real estate besides. He never asked what happened to the Muscovite who dared to soil those pristine floors.
"...there they are along with 'showing ev’ryone his gun' and 'discovered beneath a truck'"
Remember, the current thinking is that maybe Dylan would only have gotten lightly bumped by the truck.
If you train the theater audience that tickets will be free if they wait long enough, more and more people will just wait.
A lot of serious women experts are showing up on YouTube reading AI scripts. Visual giveaway is useless hand gestures, then of course criss-crossing the same point over and over without advancing. But it's felt that female is better for society than male in the rule of expert and why not.
You almost never see females doing what females are good at doing.
So we've entered the wait in line for your free stuff phase of communism already. That didn't take long.
If the shows are not good enough to sell out, but rather have a lot of empty seats, the theatrical experience is not likely to create new fans from the freebies. They'll start chanting for the lions to be released. And then they'll smash it up and poop in the corner. Or under your seat.
Dylan freed in 1971:
Now you’re probably wondering by now
Just what this song is all about
What’s probably got you baffled more
Is what this thing here is for
It’s nothing
It’s something I learned over in England
"Shooting a few holes" can be about playing golf. And that cannot relate to the murdering of Rene Good by ICE asshole Jonathan Ross.
Isn't giving items of value to a politician construed either as a bribe or illegal campaign contribution?
I see that the moral hazard argument has been covered, as well as the "look at who ends up on free public transportation" argument. I was going to bring up both of those, but then referred to the post to determine whether Mamdani was, say, only offering the free tickets to NYC public schools for field trips or something.
And then I got distracted by my memories of eating stupid food truck food on the sidewalk instead of having a nice meal inside a restaurant. Grr.
pretty soon he’ll have the whole city humming along…
“ you’ve got to pick a pocket or two, boys
you’ve got to pick a pocket or two.”
Biggest crime of the new century: Taylor Swift tickets cost too much.
Oh the humanity. Where are our tax dollars to kill this injustice?
Now make Broadway accessible, Mamdami. Insist tickets be capped at $10.
Feh.
The "theater kids" really are running the country. Or at least the city. Mamdani The Aspiring Rapper's mom is film director Mira Nair.
The President of Czecholslovakia (or the Czech Republic and Slovakia now) is mostly are figurehead. It's similar in a lot of other European countries. He meets other presidents. He gives a state of the country address on New Years. His only real power is that he can veto laws. In fact the President of Slovakia had so much time on his hands that I think he was at my dinner the night before my wedding.
Bread and circuses
Long time ago (Abe Beam was mayor) I got free tickets from the tourist booth in Times Square for performances at Lincoln Center. Later there was a TKTS booth that gave out tickets if you were willing to wait on line. I never knew they stopped.
NYC is more provincial than Mayberry
So, let me understand this- theater owners gave Mamdani a bunch of tickets so that Mamdani could hand them out to voters? This is a campaign donation- it is no different than the theater owners giving Mamdani a bag of money so that Mamdani can buy the tickets and hand them out.
"Free" is a funny word.
If the verse, verse, chorus, bridge fits - you have to sing it.
""Shooting a few holes" can be about playing golf."
Can be? Oh, really?
I’m gonna grow my hair down to my feet so strange
So I look like a walking mountain range
And I’m gonna ride into Omaha on a horse
Out to the country club and the golf course
Carry The New York Times, shoot a few holes, blow their minds
"Two things the Soviets managed not to mess up too badly: public education and high culture."
Well, I don't now so much about public education, but the Soviets absolutely annihilated the Arts in the USSR. The list of novelists, poets, and playwrights who were persecuted, purged, and murdered by the Lenin and Stalin regimes is very long. Russian theater had the genius of Meyerhold who was expanding the art and imagery of theater and developing the physical and internal ingenuity of actors in new ways until the Soviets decided his art undermined Revolutionary Ideals, then his theater was closed down and he was isolated and persecuted until he and his wife were arrested and murdered because the Soviets didn't like his new methods. Any Western movies or plays allowed to be shown to the public in the Soviet Union were completely censored and edited for viewing suitable to slaves of the Soviet state.
Interesting that Althouse juxtaposes this dreadful NYC Muslim commie who declaims about the warmth of socialism with Vaclav Havel the courageous playwright who led his nation out of the infernal freezing hell of Communism. They simply could not be more different.
There is no such thing as "free tickets". How do you get them? Standing in a long line? Then those who have the luxury of being able to stand around in that line get the tickets, rather than those who budgeted to buy them.
Or it's those who have the luxury of gov't connections.
As always, Mamdani is scum
Fitz: I did say "not...too badly." But thanks for setting a challenge to Mamdani! I am sure he will do his darndest to beat the Soviet record. CC, JSM
"rather than those who budgeted to buy them."
People who budget to buy stuff are not his constituents, people who demand free stuff are.
It's a free concert from now on.
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