Willing to Pay $80 For a Decatur Beer Festival Ticket? You’re Not Alone.
Decatur Metro | October 14, 2009
I realize I did a post like this last year too, but I still find it rather incredible that every year people end up paying more than double the face value of a Decatur Beer Festival ticket to spend an afternoon on the Square with thousands of others, throwing back half-full tasting glasses of various craft brews.
I mean, I love this fest as much as the next person, but the going rate on eBay and Craigslist is around $80 a ticket! That’s some serious drinking money!
What is it about this festival that makes people sell first-borns to get through the gate? It can’t just be getting drunk…because anyone can easily get drunk with $80. Is it the drunken comradery? The choice selection? The brewery stickers in inappropriate places?
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I go to quite a few beer festivals and consider myself a beer connoisseur, and Decatur Beer Festival is definitely the best in the metro area in terms of the selection of different brews. Though not metro, Classic City Brew Fest in Athens is better in this way, and tickets for the event sell out even faster than those for DBF.
Other factors contributing to DBF’s popularity include proximity to the MARTA train and proximity to great local restaurants.
It’s a unique cultural event that only comes along once a year. Tens of thousands want to go, but there’s only room for a few thousand. So only those who 80 dollars is less meaningful are fortunate to pick up the available tickets.
The tickets are posted but are they going to SELL??
The two eBay tickets sold for a total of $162.
Yeah, but Yankee Metro, that’s seems to be the exception not the rule. I checked some of those listings and the WANTED ticket people were darn adamant about paying no more than $5 over face and a lot of people were selling at face. Those who purchased for $182 methinks are poor researchers!
Perhaps, ClarenceStone1197. But many sold for around $80 last year too. Those adamant folks may have to become less adamant if there are enough poor researchers out there!
YankeeMetro, you are picking on me!
Good point and I hope they don’t sell. Why would someone pay $80 for a sold-out ticket? Probably for the thrill of getting in, as the mindset of overpaying for sold out events tends to be. I agree with Joel and feel that DCBF is more than a beer festival. I have been going since 1999 and it’s just getting better and better. Great weather…great music and great beer. Outside the Square, most of the restaurants/pubs are packed. Most of the craft breweries whip out the special stuff, with a lot of the offerings available on draft which is how a true craft beer festival should be. For example, Sierra Nevada will have 6 on tap plus a few more in the bottle. Prosit!
I love you, man!
I’m a volunteer at the Beer Festival, and they raised the price of the tickets by $5 and sold fewer tickets this year. The profits they raise goes to charity.
Sounds like they need to raise the price some more, maybe?
It is a great beer festival.
The Decatur Beer Fest is good, but not $80 good. I don’t recall last year having too many special beers. Most were readily available at local bars and beer stores. For $80 I could have a pretty good time at Brickstore and get a cab home. I think $40 is about the limit for a ticket here for me.
$80 ! la-ti-da. sounds like a real high society crowd. maybe it’s a bait-and-switch for a wine a cheese festival.
no respectable drunk would spend $80. it looks like bukowski and i will have to resort to subterfuge.
Yes, the majority of the brew offerings at DBF are available at local bars and liquor stores, but some are not. As someone else mentioned, the craft brewers DO often use the occasion to break out the special stuff. They also tend to have some free and low-priced shwag – t-shirts, stickers, beach balls, etc.
For me personally, attending beer festivals helped me discover great beers that I was too cheap to gamble on trying in a bar or buying from a liquor store. It’s a very cost-effective way to expand your beer horizons, if you are just starting out, as I was a few years ago. You just have to make sure to try the stuff you haven’t tried before FIRST, as everything starts to taste the same toward the end of the day. =)
http://www.BottleOpener.com, a several year t-shirt sponsor and Decatur business will have a table at the festival this year. 40+ different bottle openers and bottle cap catchers for $5.00 each, CASH. Portion of proceeds will be donated back to the festival.
well, the crankies went for a time, and really enjoyed it, but then we found we were well, a bit too old …. the crowd was so dang young, those whippersnappers .. .we found it better to hide upstairs in brick store and draw faces in our belgian beer foam watching everyone else get happy …now the wine festival, well …that’s a different story!
i too will be dragging my codgerly butt up a flight of endless stairs to join with the geezer. i needs some companions for complaining about the government.
if you are there and we have not met, please look for the geezer who is inappropriately drunk by noon. ahh good times…..
I thought you were a porn star
I am a craft beer connoisseur and have been a huge fan of the DBF since moving here in 2004. Volunteering is definitely the way to go – although even the volunteer spots are difficult to come by these days. Even at $80, though, a serious beer quaffer can still get their money’s worth. One simply needs to hang out at the Chimay (or similarly high priced beer) table all day! The best thing about this year is that the focus is exclusively on craft beers. Volunteers no longer need to be worried about being assigned to the Tequiza table! Yuck!!!
Ha! So W.D. I guess you aren’t a fan of red/green/orange beer.