Insanely Long Lines For Insanely Expensive Tickets

As noted below, Friday morning and afternoon I guaranteed my presence at Sport's three home games in the first round of the Libertadores. Sport announced Thursday afternoon that vouchers for tickets would be available the next morning at 9am, and announced limited quantities. So, like a somewhat dedicated supporter, I arrived at 9:30 or so to find a line of at least three hundred people in front of me, some of whom had arrived at 7.

There were three lines, one for members (who pay half-price), one for students (who pay half-price), and one for non-members (it is safe to presume that non of the non-members in this line were students). As I made my way to the end of the members line I saw a friend in the students line who told me that my line was moving and his was not. He left with his tickets a little more than two hours before I got mine.

The non-members line went down a staircase and out of sight, and they weren't visible from where I spent most of the morning waiting. When I finally got to where I could see the staircase, after two hours or so of waiting, they were all gone, enjoying their voucher booklets and sitting down somewhere laughing at the suckers who were still on their feet.

The students line was originally going lead up a walkway, but at the last minute (and after several hundred students were already in line facing the walkway) the authorities decided that the students would buy their tickets at some other location so the students had to walk around and through a gate and that was the last we saw of them for a while. And then those bastards started walking back in small groups, smiling and brandishing their voucher booklets, while the members stood in line grumbling.

Mind you, Recife is in the tropics, and while there were some mango trees providing shade those same mango trees were also dropping the occasional mango to thud on the pavement. As far as I know, nobody suffered the indignity of a mango to the skull, but then again, if someone did would he want people to know about it? I didn't see any direct hits, but I did see some juicy-looking mangoes fall very close to some not-s0-juicy-looking heads. Sport has several bars and restaurants within the stadium complex, and the club enforces its monopoly by refusing to let independent vendors through the gates to sell food and drinks. The bars and restaurants were nowhere near the long, long lines of hot, thirsty members, so we suffered in the heat without beer or water to relieve us.

When I finally, after over four hours in line, made my way into the room where the vouchers themselves were being sold, I saw all the cashiers but one get up and leave. It turns out they had run out of vouchers and were looking for more in some other part of the club headquarters. Many of the members in line were behind on their dues, and so one of the four cashiers was only accepting dues payments, and after members were up to date on their payments they could continue to one of the other three cashiers (or one cashier, or two cashiers, depending on factors that were not always obvious to those of us waiting) to buy their tickets.

Old people do not wait in line in Brazil, which doesn't inspire the ageism that it really ought to. I didn't notice any old people at all until I got to within a meter or so of the cashiers, and then they came marching in one after another. And those of us who had been in line for nearly five hours had to wait for them to buy their tickets, slowly, and leave before we could get back to the business of waiting for younger people to get out of our way.

And then finally, bleeding from the feet and exhausted at the soul, I got to the front of the line and bought my tickets. It only took me thirty seconds or so, as usual. Why did I have to wait so long? Why does something that takes me thirty seconds take everyone else so long? It makes no sense.

If you are wondering what the point of this post is, or if you thought it was boring and wish you hadn't read it, good. Now you know what the period of my life between 9:30 yesterday morning and 2:30 yesterday afternoon were like.