Phxated

More on the Marquee-Hoodlums ticket-fee war

The Republic and the New Times are catching up on the stand Tempe’s Hoodlums record store has taken against Lucky Man Productions, which operates the Marquee rock club. The store, which collected a reasonable $1 for each ticket it sold for Marquee shows, balked when Lucky Man tried to add on an additional $3.

The store’s blistering original statement post here. PHXated’s December story on it here.

The Republic story is here, with a consistent statement from Hoodlum’s co-owner Steve Wiley:

Wiley […] stresses he’s not on an anti-Marquee crusade.

“It’s not a personal thing,” he says. “We’ve had a great relationship with those guys at the Marquee for many years. I’m not against service fees. We charge a one-dollar service fee for carrying the tickets at our store, and everyone is fine with that. But if the Marquee or whoever needs to charge $28 in order to make ends meet, then I’m a businessperson, I don’t have a problem with that. Just make it $28 dollars. But don’t put $25 on the tickets and the Web site and then expect me to collect an extra $3 for you.”

New Times blog post on the issue by Martin Cizmar is here. Besides being late and misinformed, it’s about a tenth as good as the Republic story, which is a little embarrassing.

PHXated’s previous posts on the outlandish ticket fees charged by the Marquee are here.

Bill Wyman
8:00 PM


PHXations—Saturday, January 30

anvil_posterFor an appearance by Anvil, the heavy metal band, at the Marquee Tuesday, the club will screen the documentary Anvil: The Story of Anvil before the show. Details here.

Hard to recommend the show, however—it’s another one of those Marquee service-fee-ripoff specials where a $19 advertised ticket magicks its way up to $27.75 after three separate exorbitant service fees—a 46 percent tariff.


Matthew Moore has an installation at Sundance. It’s set in a Park City grocery store, and consists of time-lapse films of vegetables growing—with free food besides. Details from the festival here.

Moore is a sculptor, filmmaker and I guess you’d call it conceptual artist, who uses his farm west of Phoenix, now in its fourth generation of family ownership, as a fulcrum for his interests.

PHXated liked this Moore apercu: “Instead of pointing fingers I started pointing thumbs, and start to dissect how we distribute food.” His website is here.


Bill Wyman
8:18 PM

Tags: Ticket fees, Culture, Marquee Comment: comment_bubble