Internet, phone sales shadow Civic ticket sales

SANTA CRUZ — If you spent Sunday morning getting soaked outside the Civic Auditorium without getting Bob Dylan tickets, you might have had better luck staying home and letting your fingers do the walking.

More than half the tickets were sold over the telephone and online. Of course, that won’t comfort the many who struck out that way, too.

With two shows selling out in 25 minutes, Sherry Wasserman of Bill Graham Presents said she tried but failed Monday to persuade Dylan’s agent to add more shows in Santa Cruz.

A crowd estimated at 800 to 1,200 people waited in a downpour to buy tickets at the Civic box office Sunday morning, but most went away emptyhanded and angry. Only about 40 people made it to the ticket counter, according to manager Andy Botsford.

Wasserman said 140 tickets were sold at the Civic for the March 15 performance, and 106 for the show on March 16.

Of the 1,757 tickets sold for the first show, 958 were sold over the phone or the Ticketmaster Web site. The remaining 648 tickets were sold at other Ticketmaster outlets in Northern California. Numbers for the second show were similar. Wasserman said 200 tickets were reserved for the band and radio stations.

Some fans said they thought the Santa Cruz venue should have had a certain number of tickets allocated for sale to locals. It doesn’t work that way, Wasserman said. None of the sales sites had preference.

"Everybody was grabbing from the same pile," she said.

Botsford said she met with her staff to discuss whether they could have done anything differently. They had tried to encourage fans to buy tickets over the phone. She said they also had expected the rain to dampen enthusiasm for box office sales and had never experienced anything like Sunday’s crowd.

"Unfortunately, we’re just a small facility that got this great big show," Botsford said.

Despite Sunday’s disappointment, one Dylan fan got lucky Monday.

After Rosemary Sarka of Santa Cruz was quoted in Monday’s Sentinel about striking out at the Civic, she got a call offering her two extra tickets at $46 face value.

"I felt for her," explained the seller, Dr. Nancy Thorner, who purchased her tickets online.

After several attempts at getting through to the Web site, Thorner made contact 10 minutes after tickets went on sale at 10 a.m. and bought six tickets.

"I was so excited, I did it again," she said, explaining how she wound up with 12 tickets. Thornton said she will distribute other spare tickets to friends.

"I’m going to give them to other baby boomers ... people 45 and up who loved Dylan in the ‘60s," she said.

Brian Iles of Ben Lomond offers another chance at a ticket, literally. He didn’t make it to the ticket counter Sunday, but someone who did sold him one at cost. He plans to raffle his ticket off to benefit Men’s Educational Network, an organization dedicated to helping men build healthy lives, Iles said. He can be reached at 336-3354.

For fans willing to travel to Nevada, tickets priced at $50-75 are still available for two Dylan shows at the Reno Hilton on March 17.

The Bakersfield show two days before the Santa Cruz shows are sold out, however.