Lauren Comiteau tried to score free tickets for the 750th birthday party on Amsterdam’s A10 ring road, which went on sale Wednesday morning at 10am. Seven hours later, she was still on hold.

I have likely spent one-third of my waking Amsterdam life stuck in traffic on the A10 ring road. And that’s a conservative estimate.

So, when the city announced last year that as part of its 750th birthday celebrations this year it would close parts of the highway to traffic for a festival, dance party and even sports on June 21, the longest day of the year, I was determined to attend.

I’d be the one doing cartwheels down the median.

Like seemingly everyone else in the city, at 10am on the dot, I logged into the “ticket sales” site to claim my free tickets. Petrified I’d lose my place in the queue if I deviated from the website, I ignored my daughter’s repeated phone calls. I ignored my mother’s doctor. Yes, I even ignored my editor.

But by the time an article popped up on my newsfeed about what Israeli prime minister Netanyahu would say if he ever got hauled before a Truth and Reconciliation Committee on Gaza, my fingers were on autopilot, and before I could take back that fate-sealing click, I was unceremoniously ejected from the queue. (At least I think I was. The city is still investigating.)

That was 1:56 minutes into my wait.

Wash & wait

I was far from the only one waiting. I had an appointment at a hair salon at mid-day. When I walked in with my phone glued to my face, everyone eyed the familiar rainbow-coloured screen.

“You’re also trying to get tickets?” they asked.

All five of the women working that day had their devices dialled in to the ticket site. Like me, all of them had already been waiting hours to get to the top of the queue.

The horror stories were already being reported in the news and flooding social media: people who waited hours only to get an error message when they got to the top of the digital queue that sent them right back to where they started; people being able to obtain more tickets than the maximum allowed; and people re-selling their free tickets at rock concert prices on Marktplaats.

Party politics

I had lots of questions for city organisers, but it seems that local politicians beat me to it. City council members from the CDA to Volt, the PvdA and VVD to D66, joined together to demand answers to all the above.

They wanted to know the technicalities of how the “system crashed”, how organisers were going to rectify the situation and how they were going to close the digital divide that left others without any access to tickets at all.

The journalist in me wants answers to all those questions. But the rest of me wishes we could take the party out of party politics.

I just want to do cartwheels down the A10.

Sold-out

At 17:08, the message hit my screen: no more tickets.  I checked back in with my salon mates; not one of them had any luck either.

“Chaotic” was the only word colourist Pink could find to describe the mess. She had planned on attending the night time concerts in the south of the city, but she’s ready to throw in the towel.

“I don’t think I’ll try to go, because I’m not sure I’ll get to the place I want to be,” she said. Some of her colleagues will try and access the party from the east, where you don’t need tickets, but watching a group race is a far cry from the raves where many were hoping to rumba.

I also plan to access the party from the east, although I’m slightly worried how the cops are going to control the crowds who turn up there. One Parool reader predicted a storming of the Ring on June 21 by frustrated Amsterdammers.

Mea Culpa

The city acknowledged demand had far exceeded capacity and called the disappointment many felt “understandable”.

But in an it-can-only-happen-here moment, the city’s official communication went on to explain that “it’s better to face disappointment now than on the day of the event, when people are already en route or unsuccessfully trying to enter the venue.” Cold comfort indeed.

The city also made a point of releasing the demographic breakdown of the lucky ticket winners: 70% went to Amsterdammers, while of the “remaining 30%, more than half were allocated to people living in the surrounding areas.”

I understood their need to explain, especially after my daughter told me her friend, another unsuccessful would-be ring reveller, blamed the ticket shortage on “all those Brabant farmers who got them”.

She also shared a TikTok video of an angry young woman bemoaning all the Henkies from Utrecht and Rotterdam who scored tickets and would clutter the city with their cars while she lived across from the ring and couldn’t snag a place.

I’m not convinced it’s a sentiment we should still be celebrating in our 750^th year, although I’m not surprised.

“Heads will roll,” said a friend of mine in the know. (She also said she resented taxpayers having to fund the whole shenanigan in the first place.)

Politics, chauvinism, commercialisation. Big events are often not pretty. But for so many of us, this one was mostly about the party. And the realisation that we won’t be able to attend when so many of our neighbours will feels like missing the prom.

While I don’t think I’ll be drafted off the waiting list any time before the big event (or even in this millennium), my ring party-sceptic friend said she thinks the city “will declare all the tickets invalid and start again.”

There may just be hope yet.