Smekkleysa Records
So we’re at Airwaves and the big news this year is that Björk is playing. Now I’m not a die hard fan, but I do like and have a lot of respect for what she does, and can only imagine how fantastic an experience her live shows must be. If it’s anything anywhere near as mindblowing as Ghostigital‘s Airwaves set last year (it’s her ex-Sugacube mate Einar Örn Benediktsson’s band) then I’m in. The only problem is that entry to her 2 gigs aren’t included in the Airwaves wristband and additional tickets were upwards of £55. But – 200 free tickets will be released to airwaves wristband holders on a first come first served basis on the morning of the days of her shows. The first one of which is today.
Windy Vesturgata
Ticket hand-out starts at 11am. I didn’t want to seem too keen but neither did I want to stand in the cold for nothing. But I’ve been in queues like this before and found them to be a bit of a laugh, so I dragged my backside out of bed and trotted over to Smekkleysa for 9.30am…
Queueing round the corner
Huge queue was already there. Ah. Probably near enough 200 people. But I didn’t want to count (I don’t like staring and pointing at people), plus what if people left or pushed in after I’d counted? So I joined the end of the queue and got a bit of a gauge of the mood. Most people were cautiously optimistic but we decided to stay put, we wanted to try our luck.
I got chatting to two Icelandic girls, one of whom had the best mittens in the world (made by her friend):
Icelandic PacMan mittens
about the Northern Lights and whether it gets a bit boring tourists banging on about them all the time . No! was the answer, Icelanders love the lights too, they’re always beautiful. (I forgot to mention, although the conditions seemed good for the lights in Laugarvatn, and we drove out to the countryside and waited until 1am to see if we could see them, we had no luck and are still Northern Light virgins). But at least I felt less silly constantly asking people whether it would be possible to see them!
I also made another queue buddy with a German chap called Joachim, who I practiced my German on (poor bloke!) and who also wanted to try his Björk luck. We debated the likelihood of us getting a ticket – how near were we to the magic number 200 in the queue? We decided that it was too close to call but that if we weren’t lucky then it was ok – there are plenty of other things to do. But then a girl walked past clearly counting the queue, so I asked her how many, she thought we were around 190 – close but positive…
Then 11am arrived and the queue moved forwards. As we turned the corner and neared the shop, we started to get excited, we really wanted tickets! We’d waited, we’d got really cold, we’d heard the whoops of the people at the front of the queue as they got served – those tickets were ours!
Close but no cigar
We neared the shop window, people were coming out and saying we should be ok there were plenty left. We got to the shop window, still another 15 or so people in front of us. And then someone said “it’s finished”. NO!! “Are they sure?” we thought..? We seemed so close! Everyone left in the queue clearly wondered the same thing. Come on, confirm it! But then a security guard came out and confirmed it. Oh.
So no Björk tickets for us, at least not today. Whether I’ll try again on Friday I don’t know. But it’s nice to know either way that queueing for tickets can still be fun and it’s always nice to meet new people who are all there for the same reason, and all are obviously a little bit mad to want to wait in the cold just in case.
