Street Justice

I went to Las Vegas to see some boxing, and took a lady friend with me. I love watching boxing in person. The problem is that it's really expensive. And even worse, they don't care if people actually buy tickets or not, so the prices never go down. It seems like they're fine with a half filled arena as long as it's on pay per view.

So my plan was to buy tickets from scalpers outside the arena. I hoped that as the preliminary bouts started, their prices would drop. Would they really hang onto tickets and get nothing for them? I was willing to find out.

I pulled $600 bucks out of the ATM, and we went over there. We got out of the cab and I was immediately pleased - there was a sea of scalpers waiting for us.

But to my surprise, they were asking for crazy money for their tickets. Almost everything was over a thousand bucks. Really? People are going to hand you thousands of dollars in cash in a parking lot? Yes, yes they are.

Well, we searched around and found some better offers. Finally, I got to talking with a Mexican guy, the only Mexican guy scalping, everyone else was black. And I say this not as a racist, but as something that will become significant later.

I negotiated a deal for 2 second deck seats for $300 dollars.

Then I headed up to the arena, hand over the tickets, and the ticket lady just shakes her head. "These aren't real tickets".

My heart sank.

"What?"

"You got screwed, honey. Sorry, can't accept these". She rips them up in front of me.

This was unacceptable. I begged and I pleaded, but apparently ticket ladies don't have the hearts of gold that they do in the movies.

She goes, "Well, there's some policemen right over there, maybe they can help you".

Sure enough, there were a couple of cops right there. I told them what happened. They listened, with barely any interest, and then just kinda shrugged their shoulders.

I had to suggest us walking out to the parking lot and see if we could find the guy. I cannot tell you how unhappy they were to do this. They probably took that shift just so they could watch the fight themselves.

We walk back outside, and I realized I had struck gold - the only Mexican guy! And he was wearing a very distinct leather jacket. Thanks, blacks!

The cops just stood there, while I'm ducking in and out of the crowd like I'm in an episode of 21 Jump Street.

I suddenly realized I was sort of far away from them, and that's when...

I spotted him! The Mexican in the leather jacket. He was still out there, finding more suckers, never suspecting that I had an inner Grieco inside of me.

And he spotted me. And thank God there were a million other people around or else I probably would've been shanked. Not because he's Mexican, mind you, but because he's obviously an evil doer (when I am wronged I start talking like George W. Bush).

As soon as our eyes met, he starts walking away. Slowly at first, then faster and faster, just getting the hell out of there.

And I start jumping up and down, yelling at the cops. "There he is! There he is!" I was like DeNiro in Midnight Run, "Serrano took the discs! Serrano took the discs!" And Alonzo Moseley, the cops in this case, are just standing there, helpless as can be.

At long last, they see me, then they see him, and then they take their minds off how awful their lives are and realize they are supposed to protect and serve and start running and the chase is on!

Eventually, they caught up with him and took him down (that's cop talk). They frisked him in front of me and pulled out a big wad of tickets and a bigger wad of cash. Of course, they couldn't give me my money back, it was "evidence" now. Fuck you, evidence.

After filling out a bunch of paper work, I realized: the main event hasn't started yet. Was I willing to risk it again? Yes, yes I was.

I found another scalper. A black one this time, just to be safe. And I got two more tickets for $300 dollars, and made the guy walk up to the arena with us. The tickets worked, I watched the fight, and my fighter won.

The morale of the story is this: be careful when buying from scalpers, especially if they are Mexican.