One week before the opening night of Saturday Night Live, my friends and I had a crazy idea that we should wait in the stand-by line to get tickets for the show. For those of you who are unaware of SNL’s infamous stand-by line, it involves a grueling night of waiting on the sidewalk of 48th street from Friday night into 7 am the next morning. This is when the NBC employees hand out the tickets to either the dress rehearsal or live show. The only issue is that tickets are not guaranteed. The lower the number on your standby ticket, the greater your chances are of getting in to see the show. This intrigued me, so I dragged two of my friends to join me. We arrived at 48th street around 5:15 in the afternoon on Friday and there were already about 90 people ahead of us who had brought sleeping bags, lawn chairs, and blankets. We, on the other hand, were extremely unprepared. With only one small towel and our hard backpacks to lean on, we made our home there for the night. What happened through the night is something the three of us were very unprepared for.
It started off easy, there was excitement in the air, people were filled with joy over the hope that they may be able to step into Studio 8H and breathe in the atmosphere of all the celebrities that have pranced on that very stage. However, as the night dragged on and my backpack stabbed me in the back, it became harder. During the hours of 3am-6am, the freezing air started to get to me since I was only wearing a t-shirt and a measly sweatshirt. We were situated on the corner of the loading dock for NBC Studios; four garbage trucks proceeded to come in succession and almost ran over us every single time, so we had to run away in fear of being squashed. After the parade of garbage trucks, a sewage company then decided to join the party, and we had the best seats in the house; our home on 48th began to reek of the smell of sewage.
I began to break. I kept wondering, “why would anyone want to do this?” Throughout the evening we made friends with our neighbors. Some had done this a couple times. We met one man that had waited in this line thirty-five times. This blew my mind. Finally, we were handed our standby tickets to the dress rehearsal and came back later that night to await our fate. We were handed the numbers thirty-eight, thirty-nine, and forty. Luckily for us, they took the first sixty. We breathed in a sweet sigh of relief. Of course, the show was an amazing, magical experience that I now personally believe everybody in New York should experience. SNL is terrific to witness live and I cannot wait to experience it again. To make the experience even sweeter, as we were exiting, Sarah Jessica Parker, the Carrie Bradshaw, was exiting the studio two feet away from us. We breathed the same air. That is all. Whoever is deciding if they should wait in the standby line, go for it! It is an amazing experience that I could never forget and would recommend to anyone.