Exposing fatal flaws in the hippie worldview, according to Consequence Of Sound ticket scalpers are currently refusing to be cool and totally harshing everyone’s mellow by attempting to charge Grateful Dead fans up to six-figure prices for the band’s reunion shows in Chicago this summer. That’s a lot of grilled cheeses, dude.
This information comes courtesy of ticket resale website and fount of all concert-related evil StubHub, where one reseller is offering either Ben or Jerry—the only hippies who could possibly afford this sort of thing—the opportunity to purchase a three-day pass for $116,005.25. (The next highest seller is apparently taking the Price Is Right approach with an offer of $116,004.09.) These are the upper limits of pricing, of course—at the low end, a three-day pass will cost you a mere $1,250, and you can always hang out in the parking lot and get a contact high for $180.
As for who’s to blame for all of this, the Dead did try its best to outwit scalpers by holding an old-fashioned presale where fans mailed in their ticket requests—like, in the physical mail—in a No. 1o envelope. But apparently a deal between the Chicago Bears and Soldier Field dictated that Bears season ticket holders had first access to the tickets, leading COS to speculate that many football fans bought up the tickets with the intention of reselling them before the hippies finished stuffing their envelopes. So this would appear to be an old-fashioned “jocks vs. hippies” sort of situation, except that these exist.