Room 1313

It was summer 1986, it was the year of Expo, Bob Dylan and Tom Petty were playing BC Place, come hell or high water I was making it to Vancouver. To check off the list two awesome musicians at once. It was an opportunity that couldn’t be missed.  I was working in Jasper, Alberta at the time.

In those days there was no Internet, most people didn’t carry credit cards there were definitely no cell phones and most of all no Ticketmaster. So how do you get tickets? Line up with cash/credit which is  hard to do when you are a province away or you call the box office but without a credit card you can’t buy tickets. What’s a girl to do?

Well you call the box office and literally beg them to let you courier a money order to them for a ticket. Trust me this took a lot of convincing. I was successful though it was not cheap to overnight courier the money order to Vancouver. Then I had to wait with bated breath for them to mail the ticket back to me. Hoping they would get to me in time. In the meantime I booked the train to Vancouver and bought my Expo Passport. I was excited when the tickets finally arrived and I could relax.

I absolutely love travelling by train. Though these days they are much stricter. Back in 86 you could still sleep in the luggage racks. So much fun the conductor would wake you up and you would have to go find a seat for daytime travel. It was and still is an 18hour trip. The fare then was $90.

Arriving in Vancouver I found my way to the YWCA where I was to spend the night. There were only a couple rooms that were private, the rest available were dorm style. To my surprise there was a private room available so I thought why not. When they handed me the key, there in my hand was the reason for why not, it read 1313. I was floored. Up until that day I always believed there would be no such room as high rise buildings had no 13th floor. So much for that belief

As I pushed the button in the elevator for the 13th floor I must admit I was a little apprehensive, even more so when I put the key in the door. The room was quite nondescript almost clinical and a little spooky with a small window looking towards the North Shore. I hoped I didn’t go crazy over night.

I woke up the next day thinking nothing weird happened so we’re good to go. Yeah that is until you realize you left your Expo passport back in Alberta. So much for that idea. Here I was all set to check out Expo but no not happening. Interesting side note I live in the town with not 1 but 2 exhibits from Expo weird huh.

Now what to do until concert time. Vancouver is an awesome city to wander in. I spent all day just walking around killing time. Beautiful.

Concert time is approaching so I go back to my room and grab my ticket. So excited to be going. As I approach the entrance there are scalpers of course and they were selling tickets for 5 bucks! I couldn’t believe it 5 bucks. All the crap I went thru to get my ticket and I could have gotten one for 5 bucks seriously for real. Though thinking about it seeing as I ended up in room 1313 it would have worked out some other way and  I would have ended up with nada.

Carry on to the concert. Cutting right to the chase I was so disappointed. Concert bowl setup which probably explains the 5 buck tickets and the sound was so horrible. Perhaps others will remember this differently but I could not understand a word from Dylan and while I was there mostly for Dylan Petty rocked my world.  All in all a great adventure. And that’s all I have to say about that.

TS