Yet another obsolete profession.

Back in the day, if you needed a phone number but weren't home with access to your 12-pound phone book, you could dial 4-1-1 and get the number from someone working in directory assistance. If you wanted a long-distance number, you dialed 555-1212. 

And, of course, back in the day, we were actually dialing. 

I think you can still dial those information numbers, but I think they charge you for what was once a free privilege. So I didn't give it any sort of a whirl to test things out.

Whatever they charge for tapping the expertise of directory assistance workers - and for all I know, it's all automated through speech recognition - I don't imagine there are all that many jobs left in the directory assistance profession. 

Same goes for adjacent phone-related profession: switchboard operator. Why use a human when if you know your party's extension, you can access it directly through phone tech. 

Theaters no longer have projectionists to change the reels, because there are no reels to change.

I can't remember the last time I saw an elevator operator, who were a staple in the department stores of my childhood

How about cab drivers? How many of them are still out there who don't moonlight and daylight as Uber and Lyft drivers? 

And then there's another profession that's becoming obsolete.

That is, if ticket scalping was ever a profession.

Anyway, if it whether or not it ever had been a true profession, part of the game-day experience of going to Fenway Park (or likely any sports venue, especially urban ones) was running the gauntlet of scalpers jumping at you from Kenmore Square to Fenway. Got tickets? Need tickets? Got tickets? Need tickets?

These days, those fellows - and I can't recall ever encountering a woman scalper - are few and far between. 

Of course, there are still "legit" ticket resell companies, like Ace Ticket and StubHub, where you can get tickets if you're willing to pay crazy prices. (Or if you're willing to wait until the last minute and take a chance that you can get a sharply discounted ticket for well below face value.)

The teams are getting in on the act, too. Seasons tickets holders can put seats they're not going to use up on their team's website. (I don't know if they can sell tickets for anything above face, however.)

Just don't get me going on Ticketmaster for concerts. Yikes!

But we're talking sports here; we're talking baseball here; we're talking Fenway here. 

And on Opening Day, there were actually a few scalpers trying to make a buck. 

Ticket scalping is ostensibly illegal, but, as The Boston Globe noted, scalping is illegal like jaywalking is illegal. It's not exactly enforced. A Globe request for information found that only three citations have been issued in the last five years.

Ticket resellers are supposed to be licensed, but that's for outfits like Ace. Then there are the regulations about how much a reseller can charge:

There are also rules about how much a ticket reseller can charge: no more than $2 over face value, but crucially that doesn’t include service fees, which may include “costs attributable to resale” such as postage and long distance phone calls. (Source: Boston Globe)

Not to mention costs that are somehow "attributable" to whatever the market can bear. 

What's buggy-whipped ticket scalpers is the advent of the Ace Tickets of the world, and the digitization of tickets.

Although from the pictures in The Globe, I saw that the scalpers had physical, paper tickets, it's really difficult to get those paper tickets. 

If you buy online from the Red Sox (or any other baseball team), you have to have MLB Ballpark on your smartphone. I know that you can go to Fenway and get a paper ticket, but I'm not sure how you get your hands on them if you don't live in the city. I'm guessing it can be done via phone for those few and far betweeners who don't have a smartphone. But they make it a PITA.

And paper or digital, venues are making it more difficult to create counterfeit tickets that look like the real thing. For baseball tickets, the barcode isn't issued until a day or so before the game. With Ticketmaster, you get a barcode, but it's wavy, so that someone can't take a pic of it.

The one big benefit of using an agency is that you're protected against fraud. Ace Ticket's CEO had this to say:

“It’s buying a Rolex watch on the street versus a Rolex watch dealer,” he said in a phone interview.

Well, I wouldn't go quite that far, but I'm not the CEO of Ace Ticket.  

Meanwhile, halfway through this post it occurred to me that "scalping" and "scalpers" may be words that are going the way of the buggy whip. After all, they're a reference to Native Americans cutting the scalp off of an enemy, so those words may be something that Native Americans understandably find offensive. Hmmm. The Globe article does use scalping, but - not to be too PC - I think I'll switch to "ticket hawking."

Anyway, the Fenway ticket hawkers are well aware that they're dinosaurs, losing their turf to the online agencies and the overall digitalization of everything in the world that can possibly be digitized. But if they're still out, they're still making money. Just not as easily as in the good old days. 

“In the ‘80s, there was tons of money to be made,” said one man asking the crowd if they needed tickets. “No StubHub, no Seat Geek.”

He lamented how much it costs for beverages inside Fenway, and, gesturing toward a team box office, remarked: “They’re the real scalpers.”

Okay, this guy used the word scalper. And I've got to agree with him that, given the price of refreshments at Fenway, he's got a point that, whatever you call price gouging, the Red Sox do it. 

Anyway, if there's still money in ticket hawking, it's not the lucrative game it used to be. 

One of the big changes, of course, is that fans can look online at anytime and see what the market is for tickets. If a ticket hawker asks them for $X, the fan can see immediately what a similar ticket would cost through an online agency. Consumers these days have information that they didn't used to have access to, and that gives them more negotiation power. Also, a ticket from an agency can be immediately transferred to the fan's phone, and which is guaranteed.

The article I saw followed a fan who came ticketless to Fenway, hoping that - given the weather (the windchill that day was about 30), and given how awful the Sox were in 2022 - he could get in last minute for cheap. 

He talked to the ticket hawkers, then checked online. He was able to get a pair in the bleachers for ten bucks a piece. 

Sure, this represents a loss for the agency, as they no doubt paid more than ten bucks each for those tickets. But an agency's loss is spread over thousands upon thousands of transactions, most of which make them money.

A lone wolf ticket hawker has fewer transactions. He's on his own. And nothing's going to make his situation better anytime soon.

Not much of a future for ticket hawkers, I guess.