Monthly Archive for September, 2006

Page 2 of 4

Music Today refuses scalped tickets

Published by Duane Gran on September 22, 2006 in Art, Business and Music. 31 Comments

A Daily Progress article describes how Music Today is monitoring eBay and other avenues for after-market sales of tickets. This is in accordance with their terms of service, which states:

Tickets purchased through this site are intended for personal use by the buyer. We strictly prohibit the resale of any tickets obtained through this site for more than the purchase price. If you are found to be or we in good faith believe you are reselling, trading or brokering tickets for profit that you purchased through this site, we may at our sole discretion cancel all or part of your ticket order and all or part of other pending orders in your name and/or put all or part of your orders and all or part of your other pending orders in your name at will-call for pick-up only by you.

This peculiar restriction naturally will upset people who discover the policy when they are turned away at the door. One viewpoint holds that scalpers fulfill a market need for people who don’t, for a variety of reasons, purchase tickets through the official venue. The other viewpoint maintains that Music Today is welcome to set its own policies and the purchaser agreed to them when the ticket was sold.

What do you think?

Local Blogger Gathering Planned

Published by Waldo Jaquith on September 19, 2006 in Blogs. 1 Comment

A dozen C’ville bloggers got together a couple of months ago, and now Jennifer and Marijean are staging a repeat. C’ville Coffee, Saturday the 30th, 10am. I’ll be headed to the beach for the week the day, but I’ll see if I can delay my departure by a few hours to join up with everybody. If you’re a blogger, a blog commenter, a blog reader (hint: you’re reading one now), or you’d like to take up blogging, do yourself a favor and come on out and meet the crowd. There are now exactly 200 Charlottesville blogs, so the crowd’s pretty big.

New Radio Station: “The Corner”

Published by Waldo Jaquith on September 19, 2006 in Business and Music. 8 Comments

Saga Communications (which bought the locally-owned Eure Communications in 2004) has launched a new radio station in town: 106.1 FM “The Corner”. Their website refuses to divulge what sort of music that they play, describing it only as “different.” A quick listen in the car revealed that “boring” might be a better term, but YMMV.

BoS Tables Growth Tool Proposals

Published by Waldo Jaquith on September 15, 2006 in Development and Politics. 18 Comments

The Board of Supervisors is evenly split on the topics of phasing and clustering, so they decided to not even hold a vote, reports the latest addition to the Progress lineup, Jeremy Borden. The two growth tools have been under discussion for years now, and would slow and focus growth in the rural-designated portions of the county. Dennis Rooker, David Slutzky and Sally Thomas supported them, while Kenneth Boyd, Lindsay Dorrier and David Wyant opposed them. It’s not clear what can or will happen from here, but Thomas wisely points out that “the public will have something to say about that in the next elections.”

Wal-Mart Opening in Louisa

Published by Waldo Jaquith on September 14, 2006 in Business. 24 Comments

A Wal-Mart is opening right in the middle of downtown Louisa, WCAV reports, and Mayor Jim Artz couldn’t be happier. He describes it as being “like Santa Claus…coming to town.” Just one person interviewed seems to have any sense, the grandmother of James Grooms, who points out that Wal-Mart will put out of business every local establishment still hanging on. The mayor says, simply, “if you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.”

Wal-Mart’s business strategy is, famously, to move into economically hurting areas like Louisa, make their prices so low that they shut down the mom-and-pop businesses, and then they raise their prices again when they don’t have any competition. In exchange, locals get minimum wage jobs. I’m mostly blogging about this so that I’ll be able to link to my “I told you so” when the mayor gets run out of town on a rail in a few years.

Sideblog