Complaint Review: Stern Grove Festival Association

My name is James Conrad and I live in San Francisco, California. From 2017 to 2022, I was a regular attendee at the annual Stern Grove Festival concert series, held in San Francisco.

Before the 2023 season, time was that attendees could simply show up to attend the free concerts put on at Stern Grove on a first come, first serve basis. However, though the events are still free, they have set up a ticketing system through Eventbrite starting in summer 2023.

Here's how it's been alleged to work. Tickets are released to the public through Eventbrite, and would-be concertgoers are instructed to register for their tickets at a particular date and time. Unfortunately, I along with hundreds if not thousands of other people, have found myself unable to get tickets despite following the necessary instructions for the second year in a row. Only one time out of five attempts was I able to get tickets. That's not a very good ratio. One time, the tickets I was supposed to get disappeared on me right when I was in the process of obtaining them!

I do understand that these measures have been put into place due to safety concerns, especially in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. I also understand that navigating supply and demand can be tricky. 

However, there is neither a valid reason nor an excuse for why I should end up empty-handed after doing what I was instructed to do. The way I see it, losing out on tickets despite following the necessary instructions once is happenstance. When it happens twice, that's a coincidence. When it happens three times, I am inclined to consider it a hostile action, albeit in this case a passive one, but a hostile action nonetheless. And it has happened at least four times!

Even if these incidents cost me zero dollars, time and effort still are forms of currency. Of course, unlike money, they cannot be replaced once expended.

Worse yet, the ticketing policy has provided an opportunity for greedy chancers to obtain a bunch of free Stern Grove tickets and sell them for profit on Craigslist, Facebook Marketplace and similar sites.

Obviously, whoever considered this policy to be a good idea clearly didn't think things through. Since this problem has been recurrent and hasn't been fixed, at this point I will reject any claim that the problem I have described is an unintended consequence. Getting tickets to a concert should be a simple process. By no means should it even inadvertently be made into a crummy game of chance.

It is also not lost on me that people who donate $5,000 annually to the Stern Grove Festival Association are guaranteed tickets, people who buy tables at the events for hundreds of dollars are guaranteed tickets, but plebs like me are left to suck the mop, so to speak. With all this in mind, I ascribe a form of class warfare on the part of the Stern Grove Festival Association.