Commentary:Check out your seat before you get to the game, show

Long Island Business News, Dec 13, 2002 by Michael Watt

You should never look a gift horse in the mouth, the saying goes. But that doesn't mean you can't check it out on the Internet.

The other day, a kind soul gave me tickets to see St. John's University (stjohns.edu) play Fordham University (fordham.edu) play basketball at Madison Square Garden. This pairing, by the way, presents a bit of a conundrum for me. When I pick sides in a collegiate basketball event, I tend to root for the team that represents a Catholic institution of higher education, being a good Catholic and all. In this case, however, you have two Catholic institutions going at it. What to do? Simple - go to the tie- breaker.

Fordham (like my undergraduate alma mater, the University of Scranton) is run by the Jesuits (jesuits.org), a religious order that is to the priesthood what the Marines are to the armed forces. St. John's, on the other hand, was started by the Vincentian Community, founded by St. Vincent de Paul. A nice man, no doubt, but no Jesuit. So I go with the Jesuits.

Anyway, in the old, pre-Internet-as-we-know-it days, I would have needed either a working knowledge of the seating situation at the Garden to know before getting there were my seats were. Not anymore. As soon as I got home, I looked up the Madison Square Garden Web site (thegarden.com) and was able to determine where I'd be sitting.

I became intrigued by the role the Internet plays in the process of purchasing tickets at local arenas. Taking Madison Square Garden as an example, I noticed you can ascertain what kind of view you will have from your seat by going to the seating chart online and clicking on your section. The visitor to Radio City Music Hall's Web site (radiocity.com) is not so fortunate, however. There you will find a seating chart that's about as helpful as one of those maps mounted on the wall of a subway station.

Heading back to the Garden Web site, for some odd reason some of the shows and sporting events listed there have come and gone already (a real no-no in this day and age). But you can click on the merchandise link if you feel like dropping $995 on a basketball signed by the members of the 1973 Knicks basketball team - the last Knickerbocker squad to win a league championship.

The Garden site does offer the visitor a chance to sign up for a newsletter that offers pre-sale notification of events, discounts and chances to win contests, however. It also offers limited information regarding the eating establishments in the immediate vicinity of the arena.

A little closer to home, the Web site for the Gateway Playhouse (gatewayplayhouse.com) in Bellport also includes a listing of local eateries such as The Brickhouse Brewery (brickhousebrewery.com), the Bellport Chowder House (no Web site) and Okey Dokey's (okeydokeyrestaurant.com) for those nights you take the kids to see a show. Obviously if you are planning a night out - dinner and the theater, so to speak - being able to do a little advance work on the Internet can be extremely helpful.

So are directions. Westbury Music Fair (musicfair.com) has them, as do the others. But the Westbury Music Fair was also able to use its Web site recently to post an announcement that the Brian Setzer Holiday show scheduled for Thursday, Dec. 5 (the night of the snow storm) was postponed until Wednesday, Dec. 11. Tickets for the Thursday show, it instructed, should be used for the re-scheduled event. Being able to post that notice had to save the venue dozens if not hundreds of man-hours on the phone.

The Nassau Coliseum Web site (nassaucoliseum.com) offers charts for the seating configurations that vary from event to event. The view for a hockey game is different from that of a concert, for instance. Speaking of the former, you can take a "virtual tour" and see the view from your seat in the hockey set up.

Finally, in an effort to warm the soul as we slog through this winter, I checked out the Web site for the Jones Beach Theater. Excuse me, that's the Tommy Hilfiger at Jones Beach Theater. It's amazing what a little sponsorship money will buy you these days - the brand name is even incorporated into the URL: tommyhilfigerjonesbeach.com.

Once you're at the site you will have plenty of opportunities to click on the logos/links to the other sponsors of the Summer Concert series, which is a nice way to thank the sponsors. I have to wonder, however, why a concert series with so many sponsors still requires the concertgoer to pony up so much money for a ticket. And would somebody please explain to me what a "convenience charge" is?