SEARCH FOR FREE TICKETS STRETCHES IMAGINATION

In the two summers that Shannon Wood has sold tickets to the annual “Concerts by the Bay” series at Humphrey’s on Shelter Island, she has heard just about every excuse imaginable from people trying to get in for free.

Shortly before a recent show by jazz saxophonist George Howard, a woman approached the box office, claiming to be a nurse who had treated Howard’s keyboardist for a pre-show injury last year.

“She said she had been promised two free tickets the next time Howard played here and had come to collect,” Wood said. “I went backstage and checked with the keyboardist, and he told me he had never heard of her.

“But he asked he to give her a pair of free tickets anyway, just because it was such a good excuse.”

Another time, she said, a man in shorts, a sport coat and a tie waved a guitar in her face and asked to be let in to the B.B. King show because he and King were “very, very good friends.”

“I didn’t even bother checking out his story, because this guy had pulled the same ploy before at concerts by such other ‘very, very good friends’ as Jerry Lee Lewis,” Wood said.

“So I told him to try to get a hold of King himself by handing a note to the security guard. If people sound like they have a believable story, I do all I can to get them in.

“But if I get a repeat guy like this, I send him to security. And if you go through security, your chances are slim.”

One story Wood did believe came from a well-dressed woman who said she was the wife of jazz guitarist Lee Ritenour and had just flown in from New York to surprise her husband.

Wood took one look at the woman’s ID card and promptly escorted her backstage, right into her tearful husband’s arms.

“After two years of working in the box office and hearing it all, you really get keen on who’s telling the truth and who’s trying to sneak in,” Wood said. “Sometimes, as with the nurse, my hunches have been wrong. But most of the time, I’ve been right.”

Another common box office hassle, Wood said, is dealing with people who try to bribe their way into a sold-out show.

“I’ve been offered everything from drugs to large amounts of money,” she said. “I’ve been screamed at, I’ve been called a bitch, and I’ve even had food thrown at me.

“But if there are no tickets, there’s nothing I can do.”

The day of a concert, Shannon’s work day begins around 3 p.m., when she drops by the Mission Valley office of TicketMaster, a computerized ticket agency that sells seats to Humphrey’s shows and other local concerts through more than a dozen countywide outlets, as well as by phone and by mail.

From the computer, she pulls as many as 200 pairs of prepaid tickets that haven’t yet been picked up. Then she meets with promoter Kenny Weissberg, who gives her a batch of complimentary tickets for the media, radio contest winners and other “VIPs.”

Wood opens the Humphrey’s box office promptly at 4 p.m., three hours before the start of the first show. And for the next six hours, until halfway through the second show, she doles out prepaid and “comp” tickets and sells however many seats are still available to “walk-up,” or last-minute, buyers.

Wood, 22, was born in New York and raised in Los Angeles. She moved to San Diego three years ago to study public relations at San Diego State University’s journalism department.

“After I graduate next semester, I hope to get a job in public relations, preferably in entertainment,” she said. “I learn a lot from having this kind of contact with the public.