Couldn’t snag a Taylor Swift ticket? Fans brought their own seats and listened outside the Linc
The sound outside the Linc was excellent, and it was a lot cheaper.
At 5:45 a.m. on Saturday, 13-year-old Sylvia Hutcheson burst into her parents’ bedroom at her family’s Chester Springs home and yelled, “Are you ready for it!?”
A few hours later, they were on the road in the family’s new camper whose maiden voyage would be to the parking lot of Lincoln Financial Field, where the family camped out all day in hopes of snagging Taylor Swift concert tickets.
At 6 p.m., roughly two hours before Swift took the stage, the teen’s mom, Cindy Hutcheson, kept refreshing the Ticketmaster website on her iPhone. She stared at the screen, with Sylvia and her twin sister, Emma, periodically peaking over her shoulder.
» READ MORE: Taylor Swift's Friday night show was "dazzling"
It read, “You are now in the queue — 2,000-plus people ahead of you.”
Said Cindy Hutcheson, ”The prices just keep going up.
“We do want to pay for college, so we do have our limit on what we’ll spend. Probably like $300 per person is probably it, but at this point, I want to go see her as much as they do.”
Although they hadn’t scored tickets by 7 p.m., the family could hear the music from the parking lot. The twins sipped water from plastic, gold-speckled champagne flutes — a toast to Swift’s song, “Champagne Problems,” while munching on Kettle potato chips.
Their dad, 47-year-old Joe Hutcheson, whom his wife described as “the ultimate girl dad,” explained that the song was about “having fancy problems, like a problem that seems like a big deal but in the scheme of things, she’s [Swift] doing alright.”
That about summed up the hundreds of Swifties who tried but failed to get concert tickets and made the most of it outside the stadium. Authorities had closed down 11th Street, off Pattison Avenue, and people laid out beach blankets and lawn chairs and sang and danced to the music from the street.
» READ MORE: Taylor Swift tickets didn't come cheap
Fans of all ages sat behind their cars, tailgate-style, making friendship bracelets out of beads while blasting Swift songs from their radios. They used rearview mirrors to paste on body gems, face glitter, and gold eye shadow.
Terri Lelinski, 40, of Morrisville, didn’t have a ticket, but she joined friends outside the stadium and belted out “Wildest Dreams” from the karaoke machine set up in the back of a friend’s silver Chevy truck.
Her friend, Paul DiGasbarro, 44, a lawyer from Somerville, N.J., got a ticket for $1,200 and planned to sit by himself. ”I just became a fan four weeks ago,” DiGasbarro said, in between bites of nuggets from Chick-fil-A. “I wanted to be in on the party. This is the biggest concert of the millennium. It’s a historic moment for live music.”
Sydney Scher, 11, of Lansdale, and her friend, 10-year-old Abby Kotlyar, who lives in Doylestown, dressed in matching outfits from Swift’s Lover album; each sported a heart-shaped glitter around their right eye.
They sang along to “Getaway Car,” and agreed this was a night they’d remember their whole lives. The fifth graders each had a $150 ticket. It was their first concert.
”I’d do anything to meet her. Literally anything,” Sydney said. ”Me too. It would be a dream come true,” Abby agreed. “She’d also make a great older sister.”
Craig and Kathleen Lewis, who live in Salem County, brought their 16-year-old daughter, Katie, and three of her friends.
The tickets, which cost $185 each, were Christmas presents for all four of them. As soon as Katie and her friends headed into the stadium, the Lewises broke out wine and Surfside Vodka Ice Tea, sipping their drinks from lawn chairs at the back of their Honda Pilot.
» READ MORE: Taylor Swift knows how to play to the home crowd.
The concert crowd, they noted, “was nothing like a 1980s Van Halen show.” Craig Lewis, 55, recalled his first real concert: The Cars, at the Spectrum, with Wang Chung as the opening act. “Bon Jovi,” 56-year-old Kathleen Lewis said.
At just before 9 p.m., the crowd on 11th Street bounced up and down, singing “You Belong With Me,” in unison. They enjoyed an outdoor concert on the cheap. It was Chelsie Smith’s second night listening to Swift from the Linc parking lot. The 38-year-old mom from Royersford, who left her husband and two boys at home, said the al fresco concert was a Mother’s Day present to herself. Even without tickets, she and her friends enjoyed people watching while eating Smucker’s Uncrustables.
“I got a kick out of all the little girls doing TikTok dances and prancing around in costumes,” Smith said. “I love that for them.”