Too Connected?
A few days ago a friend sent me an email saying that whiskey was getting to be like concert tickets (an analogy I've made before concerning price increases, but never availability), in that you can never get the seats you want before the scalpers buy them all up and sell them for triple the price. I thought about that for a few minutes and replied back in agreement. But then I thought about that a bit more.
My wife mentioned that The Breeders were playing at the Fillmore this week and that maybe we should go. I checked last minute -- sold out. That seemed rather crazy to me. I saw The Breeders numerous times back in the 1990s and never had any problems getting a ticket. In fact, often they were simply opening for another band, like Primus or Sonic Youth, and most people would be getting a drink while they played. Then I thought further about that. I really never had a problem getting a ticket for anything back in the 90s. I simply got to the Ticketmaster outlet early, waited in line, got my seats, and went about my day. Usually there wasn't much competition either because, without the internet, you had to be pretty devout to know the onsale dates.
Today is a different story, however. Today you've gotta get online, login, and press your mouse button quickly to snag seats for anything -- and that's just to get the seats that are left over after Amex Rewards members and corporate CEOs snag the first ten rows. But that's not really my issue. In the case of The Breeders, this was a general admission show in a fairly large venue. There should have been plenty of space, even last minute for this show. Yet the floor was completely sold out. Rock and roll music has always been popular and going to concerts isn't some fun new activity; however, I'm starting to feel as if more people are going to concerts than ever before. I'm feeling that way because shows that shouldn't be hard to get into are suddenly a major event (even for little independent acts at Bottom of the Hill, or Slim's).
This exact same phenomenon is happening with whiskey right now. Whiskies that were never popular before are suddenly becoming hot items. I remember wondering what to do with leftover bottles of Old Forester Birthday Bourbon five years ago. Now I'm getting ten emails a day asking about when we'll get this year's allocation. Why are people wondering about the OFBB? And why are The Breeders suddenly selling out concerts fifteen years after they were in their prime? The internet. There's nothing like instant information to help create a bigger demand.
It's no coincidence that my spike in Old Forester requests coincided with the release of several favorable blog reviews of this year's release. The internet's impact on whiskey's demand is completely correlated, just like the ease of Robert Parker's pointed reviews (pun intended) helped to increase the consumption of wine. After reading a positive review people suddenly want something they never knew they wanted before. Before whiskey blogs became a big deal the general public didn't really know specifically what they should be looking for. Now they do, which sucks for the people who genuinely want these things. Instead of being able to simply do what it is you've until now taken for granted, you're now being forced to compete with thousands of casual interests -- as in "I've never heard of the Old Forester Birthday Bourbon before, but now it sounds like I should get one."
I did a search for "The Breeders" and, of course, I found an article literally called "Go Do This" -- a San Francisco-centered site for people looking for something cool to do. Now it all made sense. What should we do tonight? We should see The Breeders! Apparently this is the cool thing to do in San Francisco, so we need to be there. What should we be drinking this week? What should we be wearing this summer? Where should we eat tomorrow? Look it up on the internet because there's an answer! This is the reason why you have to wait an hour to eat brunch at the most-reviewed Yelp cafes. This is the reason you can't get tickets to the Book of Mormon. This is the reason I couldn't go see The Breeders last week. And, yes, this is the reason you'll likely have a tough time getting a bottle of Birthday Bourbon from K&L this year.
The internet is telling people what to do and people are listening. Sure, we can get information with ease, but now that info is finding its way to a much larger audience. Facebooking, Tweeting, Instagraming, and blogging. We're all responsible for our own frustrations.
-David Driscoll