New Years was going to be Karl's first show.

I went to my friend Mike's for the night on the 30th.  His brother Chris had grown impatient and left for msg without us that night, but we didn't care cause we had no tix and none of us were really fond of nyc anyway. We were spinnin shows all night for Karl so he could at the least bit feel what they are like live, and jabbered to each other about our wish lists.

Finally the sun rose, we woke up to a cold steel CT breeze at are feet cause we were too stoned the night before to close the window in Mike's room before we passed out. We ate some bfast and went to the train station to hop metro north to nyc and it was littered with phamily. We could hardly believe this, we were scratching our heads pondering where all the heads came from in our little town. We found a few of our kids and chatted some more about our wish lists.

2:07pm: Train came and we all got on and began to let the sammy smith oatmeal stouts flow like water. Got off the train really trashed and ran into some kids and Mike's bro Chris at GCS, then we walked the 7 blocks or so to msg.

7:08: I walked up to will call to get my tickets and they said there was none. I was completely shocked. For the next 30 mins i'm on the phone calling my mom while she was at work, asking her what the hell happened and she was like, i dunno, but refused to give me her credit card number because she thought i was going to use it for more than just the show.

Well there was no tickets and Karl and Mike were both really hurt and disappointed, so Chris and I found a scalper with two tickets left and we bought them out. I went up to my friend Karl and said, "here, i'm really sorry and I want you to see this show."  He thought I had made the whole will call thing up and was sooo mad... then he said he and mike were just going to leave.

Chris and I were like, well what to do? We decided since we were there and we had tix that we were going to go in, since karl and mike were so mad, we would just let them blow off some steam.

We walked in, got to where they rip tickets off, and without looking at them the employees at msg said they were fake. What else could go wrong?

We turned around to notice 200 kids or so running down the hall, to our surprise a fire door had opened and we ran inside. Chris and I got to a bathroom and decided that we were going to make the best of this night, so we dropped some liquid and ate a piece of gello and found our friends inside. 3/4 of the first set and the entire second made up Mike and Karl's wish lists. It was the best show I had ever seen, but I was thinking about them the whole show and how karma decided to kick me in the ass... that night I experienced the worst nye I ever had.

Karl and Mike didn't talk to me for months... after a while they came around. Then in the summer of 00 when the boys came to hartford i got two tix for the first night and said, "here have a ball."  I hope you enjoyed your first show Karl. Turns out the 90% of that show was on my wish list. oh they had a great time and i finally got to give my best friend his first taste of phish even if it was 2 years later.

- Billy K

Editor's Note: I can't believe people were able to sneak into the Garden for that run... One of my friends managed to pull off the same feat, to my complete amazement.