Uncontrollable Urge

Most people probably don't know that I collect ticket stubs. I must have started when I was around eight years old or so. I'm not sure what spawned the habit, but I've pretty carefully held onto every tiny piece of paper detritus from each movie, sporting event, or concert I've been to since 1988. The only exception is Seattle's Landmark Theatres' ticket stubs, which are printed on flimsy receipt paper, and are hardly worth saving.

I've been meaning to scan these ticket stubs into a digital format before they fade away or disappear. For over a decade they collected in a little wicker basket in my bedroom, but I've since relocated them to Ziploc freezer bags in a shoebox. Somewhere in an attic in Atlanta, my earliest stubs are collected in a scrapbook.

Tonight while I was on the phone with my mom, she mentioned that her and my dad took me to a Devo concert in 1982. I immediately remembered a ticket stub: one that I found amongst my parents' things (and horded for my own collection) decades ago. This inspired me to finally get this idea going.



I have no memory of being at this concert (give me a break, I had just turned 2), but I'm told I enjoyed it. Thanks, Devo. With most stubs I will try and post some sort of memory, even if it's just who I was with and what I remember. Like when Jordan Smith and I saw Metallica in 1992 from a "pit" in the center of their circular stage at the Omni:



This is Jordan and I on Halloween (probably 1999). In the background you can see the aforementioned wicker basket as well as my discontinued Coca-Cola bottle and can collection, and an odd collection of posters that reflected my interests at the time.



I plan on randomly pulling a few ticket stubs a week and posting them here until I get bored with it, or I am told to stop. Of course, not everything I pull will have a personal story with it. For instance:




I never went to Lollapalooza. And I certainly would have remembered seeing Poison. I'm just such a packrat that at some point I found these ticket stubs on the ground, picked them up, and added them to my stockpile. Weird, right?

Speaking of weird, I was at this show: