NIN Google Earth Treasure Hunt Part 4

Friday was a crazy day in the hunt for Nine Inch Nails tickets. After finding tickets for my friends at the drive-through of a KFC, I enjoyed reading the stories of others who had also found passes.

Tickets to the private NIN show were discovered in all sorts of bizarre places: in a Home Depot by the ten inch nails [T.I.N.], in a Barnes & Noble inside "The Recording Engineer's Handbook" (a book I've used as a reference for years), in the bathroom at the Seventh Veil strip club on Sunset Blvd., in the cracks of another bathroom stall, behind a yard sale sign, at the base of a tree, under lights in the sky in Irvine, at a grave marked "Boner" in another cemetery... Hilarious!

This was the day before the private dress rehearsal concert. That Friday evening I picked up the NIN concert tickets being held for me at a hotel in Marina del Rey. It appeared that the hunt was over after the markers for the 21 pairs of tickets that popped up at the same time that morning disappeared one by one from the NIN Google Earth map. Apparently two more sets of tickets popped up after that.

The following Saturday morning, before we were going to leave for the show, I checked the Google Earth map again and found another ? that read "Incredibly ugly hat. Last pair of tickets." It was close enough to me that I could have gone, but I called a friend [and big-time NIN fan!] who lives downtown instead, and they took off after it.

I explained where to go over the phone while they were driving. The ? was at a gas station at the corner of Los Feliz and Vermont. I told them to look for an ugly hat. Maybe it was in the parking lot, behind a bush or in the store. Once they arrived, they looked for several minutes but couldn't find it. Before giving up, they went back in the store and picked up the ugliest hat the gas station had for sale. Sure enough... They scored the last pair of NIN concert tickets!

The entire two weeks of the NIN Google Earth treasure hunt was totally ridiculous and a lot of fun... but the best was yet to come... the rehearsal concert itself... I'll write about that soon...

Read on... Part 5: the private rehearsal concert...

Or go back to the beginning... Part 1...